Paul Theroux

“Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals.”

“Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.”

“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 -...”

“Nyasaland was the perfect country for a volunteer. It was friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems - poverty, ignorance, disease.”

“The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.”

“Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.”

“The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth.”

“Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.”

“The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.'”

“Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.”

“The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.”

“My earliest thought, long before I was in high school, was just to go away, get out of my house, get out of my city. I went to Medford High School, but even in grade school and junior high,...”

“I believe I have a sunny disposition, and am not naturally a grouch. It takes a lot of optimism, after all, to be a traveler.”

“The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.”

“You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.”

“Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of travel. It's about having a nice time on a honeymoon, or...”

“Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority...”

“I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.”

“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.”

“I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it.”