I believe I have a sunny disposition, and am not naturally a grouch. It takes a lot of optimism, after all, to be a traveler.
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 TherouxGoing slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.
Paul TherouxI think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.
Paul TherouxTravel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life
Paul TherouxI greatly enjoyed Tom Reiss's The Orientalist, for its mingled scholarship and sleuthing, and for so elegantly solving the puzzle of one of the Twentieth Century's most mysterious writers.
Paul TherouxThe biggest surprise was that a country like Angola, that has so much money, that produces so much oil, would be in such a mess and so difficult to travel in. Something is almost cursed in striking oil. It's like the lottery winner who ends up broke.
Paul TherouxFriendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
Paul TherouxYou must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.
Paul TherouxIndian enterprises seemed to work so well they produced disasters; success made them burst at the seams and the disruption of unprecedented orders led to shortages and finally failure.
Paul TherouxOne of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.
Paul TherouxThe greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.
Paul TherouxNow and then in travel, something unexpected happens that transforms the whole nature of the trip and stays with the traveler.
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 TherouxYou can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over.
Paul TherouxI always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom.
Paul TherouxI know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.
Paul TherouxIn a way, Che Guevara's fate was far worse than Simon Bolivar's. Guevara's collapse was complete: his intentions were forgotten, but his style was taken up by boutique owners (one of the fanciest clothes stores in London is called Che Guevara). There is no faster way of destroying a man or mocking his ideas than making him fashionable. That Che succeeded in influencing dress-designers was part of his tragedy.
Paul TherouxA travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having a very bad time, having a miserable time, even better. You don't want to read a book about someone having a great time in the South of France, eating and drinking and falling in love. What you want to read is a book about a guy going through the jungle, going through the arctic snow, having a terrible time trying to cross the Sahara, and solving problems as they go.
Paul TherouxTo a lot of Africans, seeing an animal is a something of a rarity. So it's a paradox of this sort of parallel life. A safari is an expensive experience and it's adjacent to a place where people are having a very tough time.
Paul TherouxA travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.
Paul TherouxTravel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.
Paul TherouxI don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.
Paul TherouxPeople write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it.
Paul TherouxIt's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.
Paul TherouxLiterary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.
Paul TherouxThe people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.
Paul TherouxBogotรก seemed a cruel towering place, like an eagles' nest now inhabited by vultures and their dying prey.
Paul TherouxI don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster.
Paul TherouxThere are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live.
Paul TherouxAll politicians, even the most idealistic ones, are looking for money, sucking up to rich people.
Paul TherouxMy house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.
Paul TherouxIn countries where all the crooked politicians wear pin-striped suits, the best people are bare-assed.
Paul TherouxThe worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it.
Paul TherouxExtensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Paul TherouxI hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something.
Paul TherouxFiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
Paul TherouxPeople talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.
Paul Theroux