It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUXIt is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
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 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 THEROUXMen in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
PAUL THEROUXFriendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
PAUL THEROUXI don’t think that it’s possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it’s simple.
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 THEROUXI think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
PAUL THEROUXFiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
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 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 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 THEROUXYou can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
PAUL THEROUXThe Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
PAUL THEROUXI always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
PAUL THEROUX