Explore Quotes by Paul Theroux

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.

You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.

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.

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.

The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.

People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.

You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.

I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.

I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

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

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

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