Issue 16

Lewis Thomas

‘Somehow, despite the internal squabbles and constant competitions, the tree swallow societies manage to get by and survive, year after year.’

Issue 21

Oliver Sacks

‘Uncle Toby was alive, but suspended, apparently, in some strange icy stupor.’

Issue 138

Colin Thubron

‘The death of travel – and of the travel book – has been predicted for almost a century.’

Jack Shenker

‘My Cairo is an inverted city, one that wears its innards above the skin.’

Guy Tillim

‘Visibility is everything.’

Helen Simpson

‘The thing about a circular walk is that you end up where you started.’

Issue 98

Hugh Raffles

‘On the way to the cricket fight, Mr Wu slipped us a piece of paper.’

Jonathan Raban

‘It began as a vacuum in the atmosphere, far out over the Atlantic. Trying to fill itself, it set up a spinning mass of air, like a plughole sucking water from a bath; but the faster the winds blew, the more the vacuum deepened.’

Issue 65

Jay Rayner

David Searcy

‘When I was a kid, my family doctor, right through high school, was this wonderful, funny guy with a little Boston Blackie moustache who looked a lot like Burgess Meredith.’

Issue 65

David Sylvester

‘When you turn your back on the view, you're face to face with the Western Pumping Station across the street and its campanile-like tower.’

Issue 27

Rudolf Schäfer

‘These pictures show what will surely become of us all one day.’

Masahiko Shimada

‘If I wasn’t a fish spawned in the Brenta river, why was I so compelled to keep returning?’ Masahiko Shimada on his many trips to Venice.

Issue 98

Paul Theroux

‘Playing a role gave him latitude and allowed him to overcome his reticence.’