Paul Theroux Quotes

"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."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Food)

"The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Peace, Maturity)

"Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Life, Chance, Fiction)

"Travel is glamorous only in retrospect."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Travel)

"Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Tourists)

"Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Travel, Feeling, First, Mind, Traveling)

"Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Being, Gain, Reputation, Will)

"Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Grace, Mind, State)

"I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better."
- Paul Theroux

"It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Lonely)

"The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Etiquette)

"The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Manners, Rudeness)

"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."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Development, African, Being, Irish)

"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."
- Paul Theroux
(Related: Art, Death, Life, Love, Cause, Joy, May, Night, Passion, Value)