art of travel

“the normal is the rarest thing in the world,” and when he was traveling he spent little time looking at the sights, but went off instead “on the search for emotion,”

“A novelist must preserve a child-like belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence,” he wrote late in life. “He must never entirely grow up.”

I want to see life and death, and the passions, the virtues and vices, of men face to face, uncovered.”

“What is the use of hurrying to pile up money when one can live on so little?”

Somerset Maugham via http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-books/the-perfect-traveler-20091026/