The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia

by Paul Theroux

Better to go first class than to arrive, or, as the English novelist Michael Frayn once rephrased McLuhan: “the journey is the goal.”

The Wasteland’s

Little Dorrit. I found some inspiration in Mr. Meagles’ saying, “One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind,”

One cannot say in a few words what one does or is.

Money pulls the Iranian in one direction, religion drags him in another, and the result is a stupid starved creature for whom woman is only meat.

Less frightening, but no less disgusting, is the Iranian taste for jam made out of carrots.

Nothing is expected of the train passenger. In planes the traveler is condemned to hours in a tight seat; ships require high spirits and sociability; cars and buses are unspeakable. The sleeping car is the most painless form of travel.

This is partly a cultural misunderstanding, since all Sikhs bear the surname Singh, which means lion; they feel obliged to join.

It is ignominious when a person travels a great distance to die.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation; and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

I’ve got a theory that what you hear influences—maybe even determines—what you see.

Silence, by Shusaku Endo,

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

To see this population density is to conclude that overcrowding requires good manners; any disturbance, anything less than perfect order, would send it sprawling.

Mark Twain’s Following the Equator,

Harry De Windt who, at the turn of the century, had written From Paris to New York by Land and From Pekin to Calais by Land.

Yukio Mishima,

“The Mezzotint,” by M.R. James.