John Gimlette Quotes

I'll always love Paraguay. It's this most exotic place configured out of the imagination, the whole country.Paraguay will always be a special place in my heart. I go back a long way. I first arrived as a refugee in 1982 from the Falklands War. So it was a safe haven then, and it has become something exotic since then. I feel like I'd like the dust to settle a little bit before going back.

Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.

In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.

It is a gift, and you realize as soon as you cross the border into Paraguay, as I did, the first time in '82, that you are in a sort of wonderland. Nothing is quite right: the buildings, they've got their own architecture, their own language; and everything is just a little bit off key.

I tend to prefer traveling in the Third World countries. Like Ethiopia. Or Eritrea.

There are 60 million of us [britains] crammed into an area the size of a state. So you don't have that feeling of remoteness at all, ever. And that's reflected in the way our media works, and so on.

If you travel in countries like Morocco, and I say that because I have just come from Morocco, if people are shouting at each other in an argument, violence is not going to follow. That would be just so far removed.

That's more about lifestyle [Peter Mayles], living abroad. It's about buying a donkey and house in south France, and that's a slightly different thing. A very popular genre but that's not quite my thing.

When McDonald's opened up in Moscow - I happened to be there when it opened and wandered in. And the Russians were queuing three times around the block to get in. And when they got to the head of the queue, they'd go, "I'll have a Big Mac please. Have you the cheese and the rolls? And do you have the meat and do you have the salad?" And everybody asks this because they are so used to things being awful that it took them a quarter of an hour to order a Big Mac.

There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.

I have real fears for Cuba based on the South American experience. Where you have had such a stern regime, as Fidel's [Castro], there is no culture of politics.

I wouldn't like to see Cuba change in other ways. And the trouble is when Fidel [Castro] does go - I am sure he will at some stage. He will probably be replaced by some sort of Western capitalism, ultimately.

I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.

What I really like about Cuba is that you can go into a local bar in a provincial town and you'll get jazz played at the highest standard - played often a cappella, or certainly with no amplification or whatever. Even if you are not knowledgeable about music, and I am not, you can find yourself really enjoying it.

I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.

Argentina is really in a different category because they butchered all their Indian or indigenous people in the war of the desert in 1850s. Which sets them aside from their neighbors in a macabre way.

Paraguayans have no Italian blood and are half Guarani [Indian] blood. And the Chileans call themselves "the English of South America," which actually couldn't be further from the truth.

Buenos Aires is my favorite city. I think it's fantastic - but is a troubled, sort of psychologically troubled city.

Paraguay has had a U.S. supermarket boss as its ambassador for a while. He did the job well. He was there because he wanted to be there. Rather than the British diplomat who didn't want to be there.

I am certainly very pro-Europe.

We don't really listen to what the other person is saying. We have gotten used to information being in such a concentrated form all the time, and so continuously, that conversation somehow seems inadequate for a lot of people, and therefore they can't join in it. You notice how many people can't argue anymore - without getting very upset.

The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.

I am always surprised to go into a bar in Boston and three televisions are playing different channels, all at once. We are constantly surprised by this noise and television. It means that's what we are going to get, because we always get everything eventually.

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.

A lot of books are sold and given away as presents. But who actually reads and enjoy reading?

It never stops me from saying what I want to say about Ethiopia, the fact that a tour company is paid for me to go there. Book reviewers don't pay for the books they review.

There is a very big difference between American and British travel journalism, and that's this whole business of the assisted or freebie trip. In Britain we are unashamed about any travel company paying for you to go and then writing about it. That's the only way we can do it. But I have tried the same in the States, and I can't write for any sizeable American newspaper because they tell you to do it on this basis.

I want people to laugh with me and Paraguay and Newfoundland, but I don't want to laugh at them. I hope in my books at the end of the day you come across with the impression that I really admire both of these places.

I slightly feel, having written Paraguay and Newfoundland - and both of them have developed eccentricities through isolation - I am quite relieved to be back in France and Germany, and I want people to enjoy these books for the writing and not because they feel they can laugh - some will laugh - at these eccentric places, that's not what I intend.

Benedict Allen gives you the impression that he hasn't done any research at all, and I am sure he has. And when he is off doing his ice dogs and that sort of thing - and therefore its not only an exploration of the place but also his imagination in a sense. It's very successful as technique.

There is a whole genre of funny travel writers - that's very popular. There's Bill Bryson and people who follow that route and sell travel writing through making people laugh. It's a very difficult group to take. The line between comedy and mockery is sometimes a bit thin.

I don't want to sell other people trips! I want to be there!

I am sure you have met diplomats; they probably travel far less than you do. Okay, they get to know a place very intensely - sometimes only the capitol city.

Diplomacy was what I wanted to do. From really quite an early age and I think I had a false impression that diplomacy equals travel.

The United Nations was the thing I wanted to work for. Like the United Nations Commission for Refugees is what I was interested in. And then people said if you do that you'll hit glass ceilings all the time, because you are not Ghanian or Nigerian and that's the way to progress though a multinational organization like that. In any event, they said do five years' legal experience and come back. And after five years I decided to stay where I was. So I am really an accidental lawyer.

My parents probably feel closer to the U.S. They feel America came to our rescue in the war and all that sort of thing. And for their generation the war still goes on. We still save food and little bits get scraped off and boiled out the next day.

My parents don't think about Europe at all. The Continent is somewhere else. And they call it the Continent - to reflect, they are no real part of it.

People my age and younger do think much more towards Europe. We have to fill the gap sometime - we can't think we are an empire any longer after all.

I often think I would like to come even closer to home and write about somewhere like Wales, for example - which we in England tend to be a little snooty about. That's where the coal comes from and that sort of thing.

Lawrence Millman is a favorite writer of mine. He did a travels on the trail of the Vikings.

I would love to write a book that opens people's eyes to the more interesting side.

I find the public reaction to writing - it's fascinating in this modern age. Of course people are able to interact with me and email me, and I get quite a few I suppose.

I am always surprised when people do get upset. Perhaps its just the nutty people who write to newspapers who get upset.

I realize how much [Mark] Twain fabricated things. I like it very much, but it's only half true. And it shows what he was trying to do, which was just entertain. Which he does very successfully, though the humor is almost dated now.

One does have to learn to travel with a degree of humility and that reflected in writing and personality.

I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.

I think one should express opinions and these books are relatively opinionated. They would be a bit dry without it.

I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.

I'd like to write fiction. Perhaps at some stage.

American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.