Paul Theroux quotes

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. (Paul Theroux)
Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. View quote
Paul Theroux
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind. View quote
Paul Theroux
Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace. View quote
Paul Theroux
The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness. View quote
Paul Theroux
Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us. View quote
Paul Theroux
Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control. View quote
Paul Theroux
The measure of civilized behavior is compassion. View quote
Paul Theroux
I cannot make my days longer, so I strive to make them better. View quote
Paul Theroux
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. View quote
Paul Theroux
I sought trains; I found passengers. (Paul Theroux)
The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity. View quote
Paul Theroux
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. View quote
Paul Theroux
Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn't mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past. View quote
Paul Theroux
Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. View quote
Paul Theroux
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. View quote
Paul Theroux
Even the most distant and exotic place has its parallel in ordinary life. View quote
Paul Theroux
You must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude. View quote
Paul Theroux
Photographers are failed painters. View quote
Paul Theroux
Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash--suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious. View quote
Paul Theroux
Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation. (Paul Theroux)
Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way. View quote
Paul Theroux
I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness). View quote
Paul Theroux
Assigning human personalities to animals is the chief trait of the pet owner-the doting dog-lover with his baby talk, the smug stay-at-home with a fat lump of fur on her lap who says, "Me, I'm a cat person," and the granny who puts her nose against the tin cage and makes kissing noises at her parakeet. Their affection is often tinged with a sense of superiority. Deer and duck hunters never talk this way about their prey, though big game hunters- Hemingway is the classic example - often sentimentalize the creatures they blow to bits and then lovingly stuff to hang on the wall. View quote
Paul Theroux
Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. View quote
Paul Theroux