“Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.”

“Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.”

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.”

“The real home of man is not his house but the road. Life itself is a travel that has to be done by foot.”

“Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.”

“If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.”

“A journey is a fragment of Hell.”

“Albatrosses and penguins are the last birds I'd want to murder.”

“Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.”

“I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones.”

“So they were pen pals now, Emma composing long, intense letters crammed with jokes and underlining, forced banter and barely concealed longing; two-thousand-word acts of love on air-mail paper. Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them. In return, Dexter sent her postcards with insufficient postage: ‘Amsterdam is MAD’, ‘Barcelona INSANE’, ‘Dublin ROCKS. Sick as DOG this morning.’ As a travel writer, he was no Bruce Chatwin, but still she would slip the postcards in the pocket of a heavy coat on long soulful walks on Ilkley Moor, searching for some hidden meaning in ‘VENICE COMPLETELY FLOODED!!!!”