Quotes By Paul Theroux

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

When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

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.

My greatest inspiration is memory.

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.

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

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

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.

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

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

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

The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

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.

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

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.

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.

Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.

Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.

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

I think I understand passion. Love is something else.

Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.