Good Travel Books Are Novels At Heart.

Inaugurals Conventionally Start With A History Lesson And Finish With A Prayer.

The Only Real River I Knew Was Hardly More Than A Brook. It Spilled Through A Tumbledown Mill At The Bottom Of Our Road, Opened Into A Little Trouty Pool, Then Ran On Through Water Meadows Over Graveled Shallows Into Fakenham [england], Where It Slowed And Deepened, Gathering Strength For The Long Drifts Across Muddy Flatlands To Norwich And The North Sea.

Seattle Is Not An Overly Friendly City. It Is A Civil City, But Not Altogether Friendly. People From Outside Mistake The Civility For Friendliness. Seattle Is Full Of People Who Have Their Own Lives To Live. They Won't Waste Their Time Being Friendly. But They Are Civil.

When Traveling, I Usually Keep A Notebook: When Home At My Desk, The Notebook Serves Mainly To Remind Me How Little I Saw At The Time, Or Rather How I Was Noticing The Wrong Things. But The Notes Do Spur Memories, And It's The Memories I Trust. The Wine Stain On The Page May Tell Me More Than The Words There, Which Usually Strike Me As Hopelessly Inadequate.

When New Yorkers Tell One About The Dangers Of Their City, The Muggings, The Dinner Parties To Which No One Turns Up For Fear Of Being Attacked On The Way, The Traffic Snarl-ups, The Bland Indifference Of The City Cops, They Are Unmistakably Bragging.