“[T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.”

“Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent.”

“I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.”

“When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth.”

“Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.”

“Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.”

“We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.”

“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”

“All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,And bar them out; but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed of all?If I...”