Quotes By Paul Theroux

Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.

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.

I am happy being what I am.

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.

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.'

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.

People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.

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.

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.

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.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

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.

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

When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home.

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

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.

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.

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

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.