"Well, good food is a willingness to step out of your comfort zone a little, take a shot at the unfamiliar, try something that, OK, might give you diarrhea. There were times that I was pretty damn sure I was going to be really, really ill if I ate this. But if you're lucky enough to have a passport and find yourself on the other side of the world, and somebody without a lot of money is being generous to you, then I think the onus is on you to help bring honor to your hosts."
"It's the most exciting thing about travel to me. You're constantly wrong. You're constantly challenged by your own preconceptions. You're forced to relearn such basic, basic things. Words you thought you knew the definition for become completely changed: the word work, the word hunger, the word generosity. Or you think an entire country's going to be one way and then it's another way. I like being wrong in that respect."
"I used to believe, deeply, that people were basically bad—that given a slight change in the our situation, we would all revert to packs of wild dogs who would devour each other and sell each other out. I took a very dim view of human nature. Travel has made me more optimistic. I believe now that for the most part, the world is filled with people doing the best they can under the circumstances."
