Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.
… a man sitting still is alone, often, with the memory of all he doesn’t have. And what he does have can look very much like nothing.
Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice
Everyone is a Wordsworth in certain moods, and every traveler seeks out places that every traveler has missed.
Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope that it will never come.
…home lies in the things you carry with you everywhere and not the ones that tie you down.
In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.
If we do away with semi-colons, parentheses and much else, we will lose all music, nuance and subtlety in communication – and end up shouting at one another in block capitals.
My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.
I’ve never meditated in my life. I don’t practice yoga nor any religion. I’m a tourist on the realm of stillness.
In the past, I’ve visited remote places – North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island – partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn’t ordinarily explore.
It takes courage, of course, to step out of the fray, as it takes courage to do anything that’s necessary, whether tending to a loved one on her deathbed or turning away from that sugarcoated doughnut.
We readily go to the health club when our doctor suggests we need more exercise, but we regularly neglect the ‘mental health club’ that our well-being more truly requires.
Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love because suddenly, all your senses are at the setting marked ‘on.’ Suddenly, you’re alert to the secret patterns of the world.
Travel for me is all about transformation, and I’m fascinated by those people who really do come back from a trip unrecognizable to themselves and perhaps open to the same possibilities they’d have written off not a month before.
I think writing is really about a journey of understanding. So you take something that seems very far away, and the more you write about it, the more you travel into it, and you see it from within.
I think one reason, obviously, that I spend so much time in one place is that I’ve been lucky enough to travel a lot, and now there are other different, invisible trains that are more interesting to me.
To me, part of the beauty of a comma is that it offers a rest, like one in music: a break that gives the whole piece of music greater shape, deeper harmony. It allows us to catch our breath.
I sometimes think that so much of our life takes place inside our heads – in memory or imagination or interpretation or speculation – that if I really want to change my life, I might best begin by changing my mind.
You can only make sense of the online world by going offline and by getting the wisdom and emotional clarity to know how to make the best use of the Internet.