Tiziano Terzani

Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread _ a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just met _ and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity.

There are two things that grant a bit of immortality: books and children