Travel Quotes by Paul Theroux

There's a lot of sensuality that I associate with travel. And that's romance.

— Paul Theroux

Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.

— Paul Theroux

There's always a way if you're not in a hurry.

— Paul Theroux

... the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

— Paul Theroux

Delay and dirt are the realities of the most rewarding travel.

— Paul Theroux

The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing.

— Paul Theroux

travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.

— Paul Theroux

Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.

— Paul Theroux

“Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

— Paul Theroux

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

— Paul Theroux

In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark.

— Paul Theroux

Now and then in travel, something unexpected happens that transforms the whole nature of the trip and stays with the traveler.

— Paul Theroux

Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your…

— Paul Theroux

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

— Paul Theroux

Loneliness in travel directs you and tells you about yourself. You don't become lonely unless you're alone.

— Paul Theroux

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

— Paul Theroux

Is there any point in going across the world to eat something or buy something or watch people squatting among their ruins?…

— Paul Theroux

Because of my capacity for listening to strangers' tales, or the details of their lives, my patience with their food and their…

— Paul Theroux

Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of…

— Paul Theroux

The traveler's boast, sometimes couched as a complaint, is that of having been an eyewitness, and invariably this experience - shocking though…

— Paul Theroux

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to…

— Paul Theroux

The conversation, like many others I had with people on trains, derived an easy candour from the shared journey, the comfort of…

— Paul Theroux

I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew…

— Paul Theroux

I should start by saying that traveling in the States is a bit like traveling in Asia. You need it, it helps…

— Paul Theroux

“And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with…

— Paul Theroux

“I walked for an hour and then returned by a different route to wait out the weekend. It was one of those…

— Paul Theroux

“..luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and…

— Paul Theroux

Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue…

— Paul Theroux

A travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having…

— Paul Theroux

“Many travelers are essentially fantasists. Tourists are timid fantasists, the others - risk takers - are bold fantasists. The tourists at Etosha…

— Paul Theroux

“What I remembered most clearly about this Jinja road was that on portions of it, for reasons no one could explain, butterflies…

— Paul Theroux

The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work,…

— Paul Theroux

“But: all journeys were return journeys. The farther one traveled, the nakeder one got, until, towards the end, ceasing to be animated…

— Paul Theroux

“Tipping confounds me because it is not a reward but a travel tax, one of the many, one of the more insulting.…

— Paul Theroux

“You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of…

— Paul Theroux

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

— Paul Theroux

Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

— Paul Theroux

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

— Paul Theroux

It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.

— Paul Theroux

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

— Paul Theroux