Paul Theroux

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.
-Paul Theroux

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

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
-Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
-Paul Theroux

I added that it was no fun to grow old, but that the compensation for it was that time turned your mental shit-detector into a highly calibrated instrument.
-Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town