442 Quotes by Paul Theroux

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.

There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.

The travel impulse is mental and physical curiosity. It's a passion. And I can't understand people who don't want to travel.

In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark.

When you travel you realize how small you are. You need to be humble. You can't be a big, brash American. You think you have problems. You leave the States and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you. They have nothing to eat, they have no water, they have no shelter, they have a terrible government. So you realize we complain about the government, we complain about food, whatever it is, and go somewhere else and you think, "Now I realize," you say, "Why people want to come to America."

To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration.

There is no faster way of destroying a man, or mocking his ideas, than making him fashionable.

A journey awakens all our old fears of danger and risk. Your life is on the line. You are living by your own resources; you have to find your own way and solve every problem on the road.

A French traveler with a sore throat is a wonderful thing to behold, but it takes more than tonsillitis to prevent a Frenchman from boasting.