Paul Theroux's Quotes

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it.

The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.'

When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.

When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.

When I write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so tiny, so lost.

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

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.

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

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

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

I am happy being what I am.

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

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

I think I understand passion. Love is something else.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

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

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.

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

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.

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.

Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.

Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.

I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster.

I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.

I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.

Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom.

To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.