A Quote by John Gimlette

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.
We talk about the American way, the British way. If we had any sense, we would know that there is no American way, no British way. There is only one way - the scientific way that cuts across racial lines with international boundaries.
I don't know that there's a division between American and British, European, South American, Asian sensibilities when it comes to rock n' roll or, really, any form of music. Songs travel, and people take them into their lives in all different kinds of unpredictable and really untraceable ways.
If you talk to anybody about travel, just personally, so much of what they'll tell you about any trip is the mechanics of the trip. How the flight was, what went wrong, what went right, how they got stranded at that train station.
I think the style Plimpton popularized - the dive-in, try-it-yourself journalism - is appealing and useful for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the value of an outsider's view into a little-known or misunderstood subculture. I tried to do the same thing with my book - tap into a pocket of American life that few people have any idea about, and tell the real, unvarnished truth about it in a way that was open-minded and authentic.
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.
I have no idea what a British sensibility or a British sense of humor is. I have no concept of what that is. I have no concept of what American sensibility is. I was born in Great Britain, but I was only there for six months, and we moved to Belgium, where I grew up. I love Britain, I lived there for nine years doing shows and things, but I don't know what a British sensibility is. I'd like to have someone tell me what an American sensibility is.
As a young man I couldn't travel, nobody could travel, they wouldn't give us a passport. For many years I was trying to go abroad. And then one day I read in the newspaper about a new competition for composers, and the first prize was a trip to the West. I decided I must get the first prize, so I wrote three pieces in three different styles.
Russia's not too great about cooperating with us when there are criminals inside their borders, but all of then like to travel. And so if they travel grabbing them and locking and putting handcuffs on them to send a message that that's not a freebie.
I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason I don’t travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost.
Unlike some of the time-travel movies I love, like 'Primer' or '12 Monkeys,' 'Looper' is not about time travel. It's about this situation that time travel creates and the people dealing with that situation. So narratively, the big challenge was to have time travel get out of the way.
The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction.
There is so much cross-pollination between the U.S. and Britain in terms of comedians. British TV comedies work well in the U.S. American stand-ups make it big in Britain.
I actually don't think there is any difference between French and American cuisine. French cuisine was always about discipline, about ingredient, about creativity, but also about simple. I see America as very similar in these rights.
Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of travel. It's about having a nice time on a honeymoon, or whatever.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism.
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