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 never thought it was fair that women couldn't travel freely because it was dangerous. I'd stay by myself on the North Carolina coast for a couple of weeks, with my dog and my gun, and my mom would be terrified. I told her, if I stay home, a lamp could fall on my head. You can't spend your whole life inside because you're scared.

For me especially, I travel a lot, and with the weather change and everything, my skin gets dehydrated very fast.

I love to travel. I want to do India by road, the entire length and breadth.

The next adventure is the government, a government of change.