Quotes By Paul Theroux

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.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.

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

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.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

My greatest inspiration is memory.

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.

You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.

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

I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.

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

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.

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

The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given.

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.

Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.

I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster.

When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.

Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.

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.