Paul Theroux Quotes
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The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all through some countries.
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There are two places that are hard to write about. A place like Britain, England in particular, which has been written about by everybody, and then the place that's never been written about.
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My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life.
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Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter.
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The appeal of travel books is also the sense that you are different, an outsider, almost like the Robinson Crusoe or Christopher Columbus notion of being the first person in a new place.
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Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
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The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
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The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given.
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Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.
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The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project.
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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.
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There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live.
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I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble.
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Africa is really a place for the wealthy traveler. It's got some nice hotels, but they're very expensive hotels. It doesn't really cater to the backpacker or to the overland traveler.
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A travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having a very bad time; having a miserable time, even better.
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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.
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I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.
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I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
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Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn't mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past.
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The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
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Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash-suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious.
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People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.
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I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
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What strikes me about high-school reunions is the realization that these are people one has known one's whole life.