442 Quotes by Paul Theroux

All places, no matter where, no matter what, are worth visiting.

A 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.

The long morning shadows lay as still and dark as lakes and patterned the rough ground with straight margins.

I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.

I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.

The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project.

Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with.

You need to be on your own so that you can meet people as you are, and as they are.

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.