I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with.

Somewhere lives a bad Cajun cook, just as somewhere must live one last ivory-billed woodpecker. For me, I don't expect ever to encounter either one.

Be careful going in search of adventure - it's ridiculously easy to find.

Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while.

Beware thoughts that come in the night.

...who can say where a voyage starts - not the the actual passage but the dream of a journey and its urge to find a way?

A true journey, no matter how long the travel takes, has no end.

Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.

On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing.

The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one's self a fool.

I can't say, over the miles, that I had learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn't known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think the same could be said for time.

Everything, as Peyman said, may be a fiction – but the Future is the biggest shaggy-dog story of all.

You’ll be dethroned faster than a coke snorting beauty queen.

In one consort there sat cruel revenge and rancorous despite, disloyal treason and heart-burning hate.

I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties.

You know the trouble with real life? There's no danger music.

I'm just a human being trying to make it in a world that is very rapidly losing it's understanding of being human.

The anguish in London is a vivid reminder of why we cannot relent in taking the steps necessary to defend our homeland from the present terrorist threat.

And I saw Australia anew through her eyes. And I realised what a tremendously thrilling country it was. And ever since then I have been coming back regularly.

I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.