"Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world."

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

"The Romantic poets were the prototype ramblers, and I've often found myself following in their footsteps - although perhaps not all of their footsteps since a typical walk for Samuel T. Coleridge might last two days and cover 145km."

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

"For, when with beauty we can virtue join, We paint the semblance of a form divine."

"The overall physical demand that Iraq has is pretty amazing. It's 130 degrees, and the soldiers are carrying about 100 pounds of extra gear. It's a pretty rigorous schedule and routine for them."

"Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock."

"I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sing about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing."