442 Quotes by Paul Theroux

Travel books are all sorts – some are autobiographies, some are about falling in love. Some are about having great meals, some are about suffering. There are as many different kinds of travel books as there are novels. People think a travel book is one thing. It’s many things.

All travel is circular. I had been jerked through Asia, making a parabola on one of the planet’s hemispheres. After all, the grand tour is just the inspired man’s way of heading home.

I 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.

People will tell you, “What’s the use? What’s the point of reading novels and poetry?” They’ll tell you to go to law school or to be an economist or to do something useful. But books are useful. Books will make you thoughtful, and they might even make you happy. They will certainly help you to become more civilized.

Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial – but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.

To 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.

It seemed that his anger was partly theatrical, that he was amping up his shouts to intimidate me.

A reader meeting another reader is an encounter of kindred spirits. The pleasure of such a joyous event is impossible to describe to a nonreader, and why would I bother? But you, with this book in your hand, are familiar with the phenomenon, and so it is not necessary.

You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.