Latest Paul Theroux Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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."

  Paul Theroux

  Humble, Thinking, America

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.

  Paul Theroux

  Reading, World, Knows

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Reading is also a journey. It's a process of discovery.

  Paul Theroux

  Reading, Journey, Discovery

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The United States is a world unto itself. We have mountains, we have deserts, we have a river that equals the Yangtze River, that equals the Nile. We have the greatest cities in the world - among the greatest cities in the world. We have a large population. We have challenges. We have an indigenous population.

  Paul Theroux

  Cities, Rivers, Challenges

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Sometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Order, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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.

  Paul Theroux

  Falling In Love, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Travel 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 Theroux

  Life Lesson, Book, Good Luck

  Source: www.pbs.org

• A 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 Theroux

  Falling In Love, Drinking, Book

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.

  Paul Theroux

  Rhinos, People, Chinese

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• You can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over.

  Paul Theroux

  Rhinos, Culture, Gone

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• Albania in 1994 was the strangest place I've ever seen. It was like walking into the looking glass: falling apart, paranoid people, anarchy, no one farming, full of thieves. It was beyond any Third World country. They were living in their own private nightmare.

  Paul Theroux

  Country, Fall, Glasses

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• There's a lot of sensuality that I associate with travel. And that's romance.

  Paul Theroux

  Romance, Sensuality, Associates

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• There has to be a measure of difficulty or problem-solving in travel for it to be worthwhile.

  Paul Theroux

  Problem, Problem Solving, Worthwhile

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.

  Paul Theroux

  Falling In Love, Children, Thinking

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.

  Paul Theroux

  Thinking, Simple, Rewarding Experiences

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• If people are driving you around to look at animals, that's wonderful. That's educational, but it's not necessarily enlightening and you're not finding out much about yourself.

  Paul Theroux

  Educational, Animal, People

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person.

  Paul Theroux

  Guests, Want, Invisible

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I never stay with people and I never look people up when I travel. I depend more on just chance meetings. The advantage is that people don't know who I am. I meet people casually and they're not doing me a big favor because I'm going to write something.

  Paul Theroux

  Writing, Who I Am, People

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• Loneliness in travel directs you and tells you about yourself. You don't become lonely unless you're alone.

  Paul Theroux

  Lonely, Loneliness, About Yourself

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• Basically, what you find out is the limits of your patience and your strength and your capacity to adapt. You find that out in travel and being alone and being tested. So that's a great thing.

  Paul Theroux

  Limits, Capacity, Great Things

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be as free as possible to be spontaneous. You also need to be lonely, because loneliness is a great teacher, too.

  Paul Theroux

  Lonely, Teacher, Loneliness

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• All politicians, even the most idealistic ones, are looking for money, sucking up to rich people.

  Paul Theroux

  People, Rich, Politician

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I'm a tourist, a glorified tourist. I'm not doing it to have a good time or to lie in the sun.

  Paul Theroux

  Lying, Tourists, Sun

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I don't look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren't there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary.

  Paul Theroux

  Years, Looks, Hawaii

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• One of the upsides of tourism is that people begin to take themselves a little more seriously (and think their) culture is worth something. So rather than disparaging the local culture, they vitalize it.

  Paul Theroux

  Thinking, People, Tourism

  Source: www.usatoday.com