Quotes from Paul Theroux

This is a triumphant mood for a long trip, just slipping out and not telling anyone, and fairly sure that no one will notice I've gone.

Friends, we're on the same road.

The writing profession that I have always known is changing, old media is ossified, and what I know of new media is that it is casual, opinionated, improvisational, largely unedited, full of whoppers, often plagiarized, and poorly paid.

Herein, I think, is the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country; and while the body is being borne forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations

the echo chamber that most expat communities become

This was the first inkling of the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, near Kiev. It happened two days before, when I was in the Soviet Union - in Baikal, cursing the Soviets for never bothering to fix leaky pipes.

But no sooner had I gotten behind the wheel than a feeling came over me that was like being caressed by a cosmic wind, reminding me of what travel at its best can do: I was set free.

Claudia Muzzi, of Italian ancestry, had traveled in Italy and indeed spoke Italian. But her most memorable experiences had been in the United States, specifically in Georgia. She planned to write about it later in the week.

The absence of verifiable news provokes rumors

I made myself very popular with the group by showing them how to shut it [a loudspeaker] off. I wrapped a rubber band around the metal stump and this rubber offered enough of a grip to shut the thing off.

shadowy literary history of Othón and you see that his poems were translated into English by Samuel Beckett. It was not his wasteland weariness that appealed to Beckett—though the wasteland predominates—but rather Beckett's need for money.

the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete.

Others were just as singular and well traveled and full of promise. I felt I was in good hands.

Aliens usually missed the point about England by investing its landscape with the passions of its great literature and it had so seldom been seen plainly, without literary footnotes.

was reminded that the South is full of army vets from small towns and humble homes, the military their escape, sometimes their salvation, often their burden, and now and then their punishment.

the great theater of belonging.

This is eloquent but tentative, self-deceiving, and hedging the bet.

the obstacles to becoming noticed or published

It was an extraordinary landscape-pale yellow, under a blue sky-extraordinary because it was not a desert, but rather the largest pasture imaginable; here and there a herd of horses, here and there a camel, or a man, or a tent. It was inhabited, but with a sparseness that was impressive.

A river is an appropriate frontier. Water is neutral and in its impartial winding makes the national boundary look like an act of God.—OPE

I think shows how nebulous some migrants regard this desire for transformation.

Could be dangerous," Diego said

for the space and spontaneity of a convenient and roomy country

Primeval forest,' he said. 'Original forest.' 'Wouldn't you like to build a house here and live alone with your wife?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Have a family and write something-poems and stories.' 'Maybe have four children.' 'It is not permitted,' he said. Then he smiled. 'But this is so far they wouldn't know. It wouldn't matter. Yes, I would like that.