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

John Gimlette

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John Gimlette
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Trips
Sell
Sells
People

More quotes by John Gimlette

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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.
John Gimlette
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India, to some extent, courses through my blood. My father was brought up there, and my grandfather served there, and so on. We have a very strong family affinity for the place.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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This terrible frustration that we so often feel in the West in not being able to articulate and express ourselves.
John Gimlette
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I have to be careful not to visit one place right after the other and write one book after the other. Because I fear writing the same book all over again. That's why I am taking a break and doing something different this time.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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I would love to write a book that opens people's eyes to the more interesting side.
John Gimlette
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In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.
John Gimlette
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I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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I wonder if this reason is partly geographical, that talk radio is so much more successful in North America than in Britain? People who are very remote - I'm thinking of Newfoundland - feel very connected though the radio.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette
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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.
John Gimlette