Many travelers get into trouble in places like Dubai by assuming that it is sufficiently Western for them to drink as they do back home. But elsewhere in the Muslim world, it is quite controlled, and the non-Muslim will be… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
There's a distinct unease about Americans when they are outside the United States. I can't say quite what it is, but they are easily… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
I made the decision that I didn't want to spend my life in rooms and write about rooms, or else make books that are… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
'The Odyssey' is a great poem to refugee-dom... Odysseus is not entirely a refugee... he's somebody who's blown off course. The entire book is… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
I'll wager there isn't a human being on earth who doesn't believe in luck, however rational they pretend to be in public life. In… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
The drinker is a Dionysiac, a dancer who sits still, a mocker. He doesn't need your seriousness or your regard. He just needs a… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
Bangkok is infamously mired in lurid contradiction, but it's also a city of subtle and distorted moods that journalism and film have hitherto mostly… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
So many writers live their whole lives in rooms. You can be too civilised in the environment you have around you, too oriented towards… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
I read Gide's 'The Immoralist' over and over as a teenager. I was obsessed with it. It's written with such simplicity and dread, and… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
Mongolians are epic drinkers and carousers, and in this respect, they are extremely congenial to my own way of thinking. — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
One winter, I went to Erfoud to research trilobites and got to know the quarries, the dealers, and the remote mining villages. They are… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
Sometimes you can publish a first novel in a kind of lyrical flourish, but it is not really a lyrical form. The beautiful truths… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
I spent a fair amount of time in Communist Poland when I was young - my wife was from there - and I had… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
I've got everything against likable characters. Likable characters are usually completely forgettable, and we don't really care. I think we love villains... precisely because… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
At the end of the 18th century, a young British explorer named George Bogle became one of the first Westerners to penetrate the mysterious… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
I suppose I reached the limit of what I could do with nonfiction books, perhaps because they never felt quite intense enough - it's… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share
