Laurie Wright

“Considering our backgrounds, I found it a strange irony that Ian and I should meet in central Borneo. Both of us were set in motion by the war in Southeast Asia. Ian enlisted. I left the country several weeks before an FBI agent arrived at my parents' front door.”
― Eric Hansen, Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo

“Suddenly we were in Hawaii—tropical mountains running down to sparkling seas, sweeping bays, flawless beaches guarded by listing palms, little green and rocky islands standing off the headlands. From time to time we drove through sunny canefields, overlooked by the steep, blue eminence of the Great Dividing Range.”
― Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country

“don't want to give the impression that perfectly normal, healthy, thoughtful, and balanced people are not drawn to orchids. I am told they exist. I just didn't have much luck finding them”
― Eric Hansen, Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy

“Oh no, she was never elitist. She said that far too many women are the accomplices of cruel, indifferent men. They lie for these men. They lie to their own children. Because their fathers treated them exactly the same way. These women always retain some hope that love is hiding behind the cruelty, so that the anguish doesn't drive them mad. Truth is, though, Max, there's no love there.
Max wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop