I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
PAUL THEROUXI always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
PAUL THEROUXOne of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
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 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 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 THEROUXIt is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUXMen in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
PAUL THEROUXExtensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
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 THEROUXFriendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
PAUL THEROUXMy greatest inspiration is memory.
PAUL THEROUXThe Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
PAUL THEROUXFiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
PAUL THEROUXI think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
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