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Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.

In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.

I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

The truth is I'm not really interested in travel writing as it's generally conceived, and even less so in female travel writing.

I just don't see myself as a travel writer. I can't. I don't.

Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.

Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.

Travel books are, by and large, boring. They lodge uncomfortably between fact, fiction and autobiography.