Paul Theroux quotes

" Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. " # Travel and Tourism # Love # Action

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

" The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate's career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter. " # Exile # Capitalism # Choice

" 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. " # Death and Dying # Love # Life and Living

" 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're grateful. " # Pessimism # Love # Gratitude

" Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind. " # Travel and Tourism # Love # Media

" Travel is only glamorous in retrospect. " # Travel and Tourism # Love # Action

" Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us. " # Fiction # Life and Living # Science Fiction

" Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. " # Travel and Tourism # Love # Action

" “Mustn’t grumble” was the most English of expressions. English patience was mingled inertia and despair. What was the use? But Americans did nothing but grumble! Americans also boasted. "I do some pretty incredible things” was not an English expression. "I’m fairly keen" was not American. Americans were showoffs — it was part of our innocence — we often fell on our faces; the English seldom showed off, so they seldom looked like fools. " # Patience # America # Language