I've taught the better class of tourist both to see and not to see; to lift their eyes above and beyond the inessentials, and thrill to our western Nature in her majesty.

The Falklands held a mirror up to our own islands, and it reflected, in brilliantly sharp focus, all our injured belittlement, our sense of being beleaguered, neglected and misunderstood.

Travel. It was an intransitive verb. It didn't involve any destinations. It was going to the going's sake, to be anywhere but where you were, with motion itself as the only object.

Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony.

The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude facts at your feet.

In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air.

Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose.

Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

Good travel books are novels at heart.

In novels and autobiographies, the first positive move that the immigrant makes towards assimilation is to buy himself a suit of city clothes.

To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.

Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfactions.

We must go beyond being reactive and defensive. As Europeans we must regain our self-confidence and realize our own strengths.

Part of the business of being an artist is abetting talent. The best do that.

How can you be happy in a world like this? You have got to be crazy to even attempt something like that.

It really sucks when music is so perfect you just don't need to hear it anymore.

Outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence.

All quitters are good losers.

My daily Nespresso coffee, an unexpected shaft of sunlight through the window on a winter's day, my bargain Missoni sunglasses (70 percent off!)

I like to reminisce with people I don't know.