Paul Theroux Quotes

memory is the only way home.

Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy.

Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees ... one's happiness, one's reality?

Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On

And so there would always be more to remember that could no longer be seen...our history is always returning to a little patch of weeds and saplings with an old chimney sticking up by itself...and here I look ahead to the resting of my case: I love the house that belonged to the chimney, holding it bright in memory, and love the saplings and the weeds.

Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

And some places you been before are so great that you don't ever mind going back. Some places you been before you don't ever want to go back, you know, like Montreal in the Winter.

People try to keep their past, like kind of holding on to their past. Every Springsteen song talks about that.

This house was our dream-the gardens, the study, even the swimming pool. Even though I can't see John when I wake up in the morning, I can always feel him here with me.

Though I stay in Delhi, I often think about Himachal.

I don't get back to Michigan nearly as much as I'd like to.

What I do miss is the Jersey Shore.

Liverpool was a special city that took to me; I will always remember how special that place was. I obviously don't miss the rain.

You can certainly get an idea of the value of memory if your memories can carry you out into the world no matter how utterly dissatisfied you may be with the present and wish you could get away from it.

Because of Iowa, I like being in a different state that doesn't even have grass and think that I smell fresh-cut grass. It brings me home.

When I was in Canada, the opportunities were huge. For every place I went to, I dreamt of bringing my family, too. When I ate at restaurants, I wished I could let my family experience the food I ate, too.

I love nostalgia.

All I wanted was what I'd already had. That exultation, that love. It was my one real home; I was a visitor everywhere else.

Memory, bosom-spring of joy.

A happy memory is perhaps on this earth truer than happiness itself.

Do you remember Italy?

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

Memory is satisfied desire.

There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.