Paul theroux

An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.

There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.

There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

If you look at a map, you see that Hawaii is in the middle of nowhere. It's 17 hours of straight flying from London. It's very far away, and sometimes you feel as if you're on another planet. But I...

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.

My record was so bad that I was first rejected by the Peace Corps as a poor risk and possible troublemaker and was accepted as a volunteer only after a great deal of explaining and arguing.