Writers are painful friends, and they are seldom friendly with others. They are insecure in the presence of other writers. Composers of certain kinds of music are the same--tormented and intolerant. Yet some arts not only make the artist social but make him depend upon sociability in order to succeed. Painting is one.

Paul Theroux

My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.

Paul Theroux

self islands world

I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.

Paul Theroux

productivity strive inspiring

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.

Paul Theroux

risk travel moving

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

Paul Theroux

live-your-life reaching destination

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.

Paul Theroux

going-away different long

Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor.

Paul Theroux

suits-of-armor airplane lovers

Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.

Paul Theroux

reading knows world

Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

Paul Theroux

exotic states mind

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

Paul Theroux

vanishing lines travel

When you travel you realize how small you are. You need to be humble. You can't be a big, brash American. You think you have problems. You leave the States and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you. They have nothing to eat, they have no water, they have no shelter, they have a terrible government. So you realize we complain about the government, we complain about food, whatever it is, and go somewhere else and you think, "Now I realize," you say, "Why people want to come to America."

Paul Theroux

humble america thinking

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

Paul Theroux

second-chance giving fiction

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

Paul Theroux

modest reputation gains

There has to be a measure of difficulty or problem-solving in travel for it to be worthwhile.

Paul Theroux

problem-solving worthwhile problem

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

Paul Theroux

journey adventure travel

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

Paul Theroux

states mind attitude

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

Paul Theroux

mines ifs

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

Paul Theroux

principled lonely expensive

I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something.

Paul Theroux

vacation hate fun

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Paul Theroux

inspirational funny travel

I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.

Paul Theroux

phones lonely ideas