442 Quotes by Paul Theroux

People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response.

The Colombians are good-tempered people. They are used to waiting for buses that are late, used to riding buses and trains that do not arrive.

People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields or fix roofs, engineers, or car mechanics. I think lying on your back working under an oily car, that's a job.

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.

The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing.

People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.

In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.

The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.

When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.