A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration (Travelers' Tales)

Henry David Thoreau, one of the great explorers of his time, reminded himself in his journal, “It matters not where or how far you travel—the farther commonly the worse—but how much alive you are.

I pay a lot of attention to place in my writing, so when I arrive in a new town I try to do what Lawrence Durrell recommended in his essay “Spirit of Place,” which is to get still as a needle, as he puts it. [“It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you

New experiences and what they lead to are why travel matters.

Anne Lamott once observed that all writers “are little rivers running into one lake,”