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An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old World haunted me from early childhood. I cherished a presentiment, amounting almost to belief, that I should one day behold the scenes, among which my fancy had so long wandered.

Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if you're not careful.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

That powers my desire to write: the sense of how quickly everything on the surface of life can be cut away and you can suddenly be inside the most inner part of the most inner life of a person. What does it feel like there, and what are the regrets and sensations and longings, and what is the music of it?

I've found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that's where many people cultivate inspiration.

Many in the world are searching, often intensely, for a source of refreshment that will quench their yearning for meaning and direction in their lives. They crave a cool, satisfying drink of insight and knowledge that will soothe their parched souls.

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.

First, it was not a strip bar, it was an erotic club. And second, what can I say? I'm a night owl.

The place of my birth, and residence for nearly sixteen years, in the early part of my life, became endeared to my feelings and affections; and more especially so after I had quitted it for an unknown place, and to associate with strangers.

There comes a moment on a journey when something sweet, something irresistible and charming as wine raised to thirsty lips, wells up in the traveller's being.