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In travel, as in many other experiences in life, once is usually enough.

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The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my l...more

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I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little chil...more

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The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all t...more

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Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of al...more

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When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone o...more

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What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to...more

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Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I ...more

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I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you ...more

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Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

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Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't kn...more

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The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fic...more