Paul Theroux Quotes
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Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial.
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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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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 greatest inspiration is memory.
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People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response.
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When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.
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One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else.
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You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.
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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.
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Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.
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People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.
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A journey awakens all our old fears of danger and risk. Your life is on the line. You are living by your own resources; you have to find your own way and solve every problem on the road.
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I should start by saying that traveling in the States is a bit like traveling in Asia. You need it, it helps to have an introduction - that there is a certain network.
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There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.
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I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling.
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Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.
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Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.
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The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times.