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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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John Gimlette
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Fidel
Totalitarian
Castro
Regime
Regimes
Change
Would
Like
Apologist

More quotes by John Gimlette

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I don't therefore know how to write for the big papers. It must be kids - students - and retired people. And the reality is they are overwhelmed with people sending in their holiday stories and bits and pieces and so on.
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In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.
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Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.
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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.
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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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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 don't want to sell other people trips! I want to be there!
John Gimlette
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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.
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
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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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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 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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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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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.
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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I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.
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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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.
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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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.
John Gimlette