Paul Theroux Quotes

The first trip I remember taking was on the train from Virginia up to New York City, watching the summertime countryside rolling past the window. They used white linen tablecloths in the dining car in those days, and real silver. I love trains to this day. Maybe that was the beginning of my fixation with leisurely modes of travel.

I sought trains; I found passengers.

Truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes.

I love trains. I don't even mind First Great Western, which is a stupid name because it implies every carriage is first class, but they're not.

I've been to so many beautiful countries and never got the chance to see them.

Sightseeing is the art of disappointment.

If you have never taken the train across Canada, you really should put it on your life list... Meanwhile, I get to sit back and watch for moose from the dome car as we roll through the lake-dotted vastness of the boreal forest.

Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.

It is a flat'ning Thought, that the more we have seen, the less we have to say.

Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed.

Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.

You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.

In other words, it is what I do in the world that matters. When I traveled for three months in the Mideast, the places I wanted to go back to were Turkey and the Gaza Strip. It has to do with what Gandhi said: he found God in the eyes of the poor. Those are the places which were so moving that they were just unbearable.

All places, no matter where, no matter what, are worth visiting.

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.

I had this aunt who had a career and traveled. She'd say things like, "When you go to college, I think we should go scuba diving in the summer. The scuba diving in Portugal is fabulous." And I'd be like, "Portugal! Holy cats!".

I would go to the beach in my turtle neck, all bundle up. I would read my book and kind of scowl, but I hadn't seen the most beautiful beaches in the world. We had a beach (in Canada) where you couldn't even go swimming. But once I travelled and saw more beautiful areas, my relationship to the planet expanded I started connect to it more and be more aware.

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Everyone is a Wordsworth in certain moods, and every traveler seeks out places that every traveler has missed.

People who behave at forty as they did at twenty must sometimes wonder why their charm is not working.

All of a sudden, I feel very old and very tired. Maybe when I get to California, the smog, brush fires, floods, and earthquakes will cheer me up.

before one actually visits them, everyone tends to think of their favorite countries as one grand Disneyland filled with national monuments and historical treasures conveniently laid out for easy viewing, when what they really are filled with, of course, is people going to work, laundromats and places to buy rat poison.

We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired.

It is hot in Tokyo, it’s humid, I’m tired, all of these backs are in front of you, I’m not going to make the team anyway so screw it. I remember going back and I called down to the desk. I was asking about some flights out of there.

No matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts.