Tom Miller > Quotes

“Great travel writing consists of equal parts curiosity, vulnerability and vocabulary. It is not a terrain for know-it-alls or the indecisive. The best of the genre can simply be an elegant natural history essay, a nicely writ sports piece, or a well-turned profile of a bar band and its music. A well-grounded sense of place is the challenge for the writer. We observe, we calculate, we inquire, we look for a link between what we already know and what we're about to learn. The finest travel writing describes what's going on when nobody's looking.”
― Tom Miller

“No camera, no recording device, no laptop, none of this palm pilot nonsense or a cell phone. Paper and pencil, a book, maybe a bilingual dictionary. Anything beyond that (a) can be stolen, and (b) intimidates people you encounter. The more double-A batteries you carry, the more you distance yourself from the people you're writing about.”
― Tom Miller

“He spoke as if he held marbles in his mouth. 'Más o menos'--more or less--came out as 'maomay.' He was on a low-consonant diet, feasting on vowels”
― Tom Miller, The Panama Hat Trail: A Journey from South America

“He spoke as if he held marbles in his mouth. 'Más o menos'--more or less--came out as 'maomay.' He was on a low-consonant diet, feasting on vowels.”
― Tom Miller