Quotes About Paul Theroux

I kept the letter those forty years as a talisman, as a goad, and as a rare example of the severe honesty of someone who seldom told the truth.

the helpful 2012 guide Don't Go There. It's Not Safe. You'll Die, and Other More Rational Advice for Overlanding Mexico and Central America.

And I had the gringo's instant assurance that my country, and my car, was just behind the humongous wall.

I'm going to have real tea," she said. I smiled in confusion. "With your tea bag," Beth said, and reached across the table to the saucer where my discarded tea bag lay like a dead mouse. Being a resourceful traveler, she popped the thing into her cup.

A further detail: this gringo writer was self-supporting and had no connection to the American embassy or any foreign organization.

Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I had various schemes: one was to be a psychiatrist, another was tropical medicine.

For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer.