Paul Theroux Quotes

Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.

There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.

You can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over.

All travel is circular. I had been jerked through Asia, making a parabola on one of the planet's hemispheres. After all, the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.

Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.

Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.

Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.

When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.

The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.

Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.

Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.

I am happy being what I am.

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way

I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something.

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

Basically, what you find out is the limits of your patience and your strength and your capacity to adapt. You find that out in travel and being alone and being tested. So that's a great thing.

The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.

An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.

Banks and donors and charities claimed to have had successes in Mozambique. I suspected they invented these successes to justify their existence.

You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.

You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.

Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.

The monotony of staying in one place is the best thing for writing a novel. Having regular habits, a kind of security, but especially no big surprises, no shocks.

The long morning shadows lay as still and dark as lakes and patterned the rough ground with straight margins.

He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.

I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.

The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate's career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter.

Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor.

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.

What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you're not in a hurry.

Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.

Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life.

Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories.

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.

Going slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.