If you want to change the world, change yourself.

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

In Seattle, I soon found that my radical ideas and aesthetic explorations - ideas and explorations that in Richmond, Virginia, might have gotten me stoned to death with hush puppies - were not only accepted but occasionally applauded.

A lot of my work comes from what in Asia is called the 'mind of wonder.' There is not a lot of 'mind of wonder' writing in contemporary Western literature. I think that's what appeals to the readers who are my fans.

The travel book is a convenient metaphor for life, with its optimistic beginning or departure, its determined striving, and its reflective conclusion. Journeys change travellers just as a good travel book can change readers.

I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve... there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change.

In a large bureaucracy, you cannot exercise the transformation of any situation without coopting bureaucracy.

This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible.