Tag: Paul Theroux

Travel works best when you’re forced to come to terms with the place you’re in.

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It’s not about inventing.

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn’t say that I’m a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels – and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.

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 are grateful.