Paul Theroux Quotes
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The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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 have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.
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Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.
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I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.
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It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.
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Love doesn't last.
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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.
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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.
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The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to share it with the reader, not to cover up the truth but to deliver it obliquely.
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Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.
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Television cannot film corruption. Television cannot spend five days on a rattling railway train, talking endlessly. Television needs excitement, it needs an angle, it needs a 'sound bite.
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Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.
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Because of my capacity for listening to strangers' tales, or the details of their lives, my patience with their food and their crotchets, my curiosity that borders on nosiness, I am told that anyone traveling with me experiences an unbelievable tedium, and this is why I choose to travel alone.
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I am happy being what I am.
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Dentists seem to me very orderly, businesslike people who appear to become somewhat bored with the routine of their work after a period of time. Perhaps I'm wrong.
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A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride.
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It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
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You need to be on your own so that you can meet people as you are, and as they are.
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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.