A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
— Paul Theroux
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.
Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
When I write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so tiny, so lost.
The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.
The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.
I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.
Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
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.
Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
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.
Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.
The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.
It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it.
Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.
I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.
It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
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.
