{"author":"Paul Theroux","author_id":"Paul+Theroux","total_quotes":69,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["food","good","grateful "],"id":4348,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["life","home","world "],"id":4442,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["art","travel","writing"],"id":6479,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"..Luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express an opinion, seem as though they are from another planet. It was also my experience that one of the worst aspects of travelling with wealthy people, apart from the fact that the rich never listen, is that they constantly groused about the high cost of living – indeed, the rich usually complained of being poor.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["travel","wanderlust"],"id":14372,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["book","books","reader","reading"],"id":18084,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewitchment: railways are irresistible bazaars... Anything is possible on a train...","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["contemplation","journeys","philosophy","train","travel"],"id":30877,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"The appeal of travel books is also the sense that you are different, an outsider, almost like the Robinson Crusoe or Christopher Columbus notion of being the first person in a new place.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["you","place","new "],"id":32523,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"If the Internet were everything it is cracked up to be, we would all stay at home and be brilliantly witty and insightful. Yet with so much contradictory information available, there is more reason to travel than ever before: to look closer, to dig deeper, to sort the authentic from the fake; to verify, to smell, to touch, to taste, to hear and sometimes - importantly - to suffer the effects of this curiosity.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["travel"],"id":45425,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"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..","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["inspirational","risk","travel"],"id":46197,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"},{"text":"The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all through some countries.","author":"Paul Theroux","tags":["road","train","me "],"id":46353,"author_id":"Paul+Theroux"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":69,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}