Because of my capacity for listening to strangers' tales, or the details of their lives, my patience with their food and their crotchets, my curiosity that borders on nosiness, I am told that anyone traveling with me experiences an unbelievable tedium, and this is why I choose to travel alone.

The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth.

The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project.

When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.

I just respect people and mind my business. I don't got time to worry about what the next man's pockets are looking like, I gotta worry about what mine are looking like and my family.

If you get a child when you're 50, you'll understand what children are.

So long as I can stay mentally alert - inquiring, curious - I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don't want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I'm just not ready to stop, to die.

I was born in a small town. My parents, my father was a teacher. My mother was a housewife.