Explore Quotes by Paul Theroux

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.

There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.

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

The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.

I think I understand passion. Love is something else.

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.

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.

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

I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you're not in a hurry.

One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

In a way, Che Guevara's fate was far worse than Simon Bolivar's. Guevara's collapse was complete: his intentions were forgotten, but his style was taken up by boutique owners (one of the fanciest clothes stores in London is called Che Guevara). There is no faster way of destroying a man or mocking his ideas than making him fashionable. That Che succeeded in influencing dress-designers was part of his tragedy.

My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.

A person who is tired of London is not necessarily tired of life; it might be that he just can’t find a parking place.

Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.

Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.