One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.

For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.

Every man was created a one- and- only individual, as a person with a specific gift

Character is plot, plot is character.

Adultery - which is the only grounds for divorce in New York - is not grounds for divorce in California. As a matter of fact, adultery in Southern California is grounds for marriage.

I just want to write good songs that people love, which is a tough thing to do.

I like L.A., but I shouldn't live there.

No matter how complex global problems may seem, it is we ourselves who have given rise to them. They cannot be beyond our power to resolve

Don't look left nor right and never compete. Never. Watching the other guy is what kills all forms of energy.

Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart--and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.

No man who can do any one thing well will be able to any different thing equally well.

A family ship will never sink until it is abandoned by its crew.