Paul Theroux Quotes (21 Quotes)

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.

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

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

It is the simplest fact of Indian life there are too many Indians

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.

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.

The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

The kind of travel I do is a reaction to that. Instead of going to meet gorillas or Bhutan, I prefer to go my own way and do things the wealthy wouldn't dare to do.

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

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

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

The drug tour he had hoped would be unique, his own, ... was apparently a widely known trip down a well-traveled path, in the sort of full-color brochure that also described gorilla encounters in Africa and white-water rafting on the Ganges and treks to the Everest base camp and birding in Mongolia.

As Calcutta smells of death and Bombay of Money, Bangkok smells of sex, but this sexual aroma is mingled with the sharper whiffs of sex and money

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.

I should have worked just long enough to discover that I didn't like it.

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

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

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.

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