Quotes from Paul Theroux

as Henry James had said in a letter to a do-gooding friend, "Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses—remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own.

I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about.

In travel, as in many other experiences in life, once is usually enough.

In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pinstriped suits, the best people are bare-assed.

Even the smoke of our motherland is sweet and pleasant to us.")

You travel all over, the woman said. Do you write about your travels? I said, Yes, I did. Articles. Books. Whatever. You must write Paul Theroux-type travel books, she said. I said, Exactly, and told her why.

I believe in every possible manifestation of spiritual strangeness. I believe in all possible escapes. The only thing I cannot endure is reality, whatever it may be. I believe that the writer is defined by the constant necessity of creating a world, to depart from this world. Literature is more concerned with misery than with happiness. Writing is directly related to frustration. It is a reflection of personal desperation. The writer is profoundly disgusted with his reality.

The only cure for seasickness is to sit on the shady side of an old brick church in the country.

Duffil had that uneasy look of a many who has left his parcels elsewhere,which is also the look of a man who thinks he's being followed.

And father said I never wanted this. I'm sick of everyone pretending to be old Dan Beavers in his L. L. Bean moccasins, and his Dubbelwares, and his Japanese bucksaw -- all these fake frontiersmen with their chuck wagons full of Twinkies and Wonderbread and aerosol cheese spread. Get out the Duraflame log and the plastic cracker barrel, Dan, and let's talk self-sufficiency!

On that trip it was my good fortune to be wrong; being mistaken is the essence of the traveler's tale.

I decided that travel was flight and pursuit in equal parts

All solitary travel offers a sort of special license allowing you to be anyone you want to be

The three biggest funerals in Alabama history define the state's contending loyalties, I was told: George Wallace's, Martin Luther King's, and Bear Bryant's.

And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with a main street and a railway station, and people with dogs and electric lights it was near enough to the end of the earth to give me the impression that I was a solitary explorer in a strange land. That illusion (which was an illusion in the South Pole and at the headwaters of the Nile) was enough of a satisfaction to me to make me want to go forward.

One thinks one is going to the tropics and one finds oneself in the Chinese version of Welwyn Garden City.

most of the portraits of Niyazov all over Turkmenistan showed him smiling, though he never looked less reliable, or less amused, than when he was smiling. His smile – and this may be true of all political leaders – was his most sinister feature.

The sunset's fire was tangled in leaden clouds, and the pillars of rain supporting the toppling thunderheads were very close;

Less frightening, but no less disgusting, is the Iranian taste for jam made out of carrots.

Mimicry reassures the weak, and the envious fool takes the risk as often as the visionary who mocks the error and leave the man alone.

Normal, nice people don't become writers.

and the relief of being able to walk around without having to search for a parking place added to the pleasure of strolling

I want to know the age. The sex. Most of all, the fingerprints. I'd like to identify who it is. After he had agreed, and I had left the office, walking to calm myself, I thought: And who am I? Please tell me who I am and what I'm doing.

Nothing is more satisfying in travel than to land in a place and assume an occupation, even a temporary one, as a teacher.