I think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
PAUL THEROUXI think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
PAUL THEROUXMen in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
PAUL THEROUXIf 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.
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 THEROUXI don’t look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren’t there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary.
PAUL THEROUXFiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
PAUL THEROUXI always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
PAUL THEROUXYou can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
PAUL THEROUXIt is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUXSometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you.
PAUL THEROUXFriendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
PAUL THEROUXWriting … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
PAUL THEROUXEven if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
PAUL THEROUXYou think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.
PAUL THEROUXI don’t think that it’s possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it’s simple.
PAUL THEROUXMark 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.
PAUL THEROUX