Paul Theroux Quotes
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A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
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The place that interests me most, actually, is the United States. I've realized that I haven't traveled much in the States. There's a lot to see.
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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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I feel as if my mission is to write, to see, to observe, and I feel lazy if I'm not reaching conclusions. I feel stupid. I feel as if I'm wasting my time.
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I don't look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren't there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary.
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The United States is a world unto itself. We have mountains, we have deserts, we have a river that equals the Yangtze River, that equals the Nile. We have the greatest cities in the world - among the greatest cities in the world.
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Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
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The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.
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I think I am typical in believing that the Peace Corps trained us brilliantly and then did little more except send us into the bush. It was not a bad way of running things.
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Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of travel. It's about having a nice time on a honeymoon, or whatever.
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I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.
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I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.
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When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home.
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You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.
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An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.
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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.'
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I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy.
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The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth.
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In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there has been too much of) with ideas (of which there are too few. I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.
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I think I understand passion. Love is something else.
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My record was so bad that I was first rejected by the Peace Corps as a poor risk and possible troublemaker and was accepted as a volunteer only after a great deal of explaining and arguing.
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My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.
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You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.
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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.