Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
PAUL THEROUXFiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
PAUL THEROUXFriendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
PAUL THEROUXThe Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
PAUL THEROUXWriting … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
PAUL THEROUXIt is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.
PAUL THEROUXMy greatest inspiration is memory.
PAUL THEROUXEver 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.
PAUL THEROUX…a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
PAUL THEROUXI always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
PAUL THEROUXAnimal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.
PAUL THEROUXMen in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
PAUL THEROUXIt is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUXI don’t think that it’s possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it’s simple.
PAUL THEROUXSomeone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.
PAUL THEROUXThe 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.
PAUL THEROUXI think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
PAUL THEROUX