The Novel Travelogue

"…the difference between travel writing and fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Face of a place

"Travelling over a long distance becomes, after three months, like tasting wine of picking at a global buffet. A place is approached, sampled, and given a mark."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

The AC coach: a double trap

"I was trapped by the double glazing. I couldn’t even open the window…experiencing a heightened form of…alienation."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Double take on (un)happy memories

"It is possible at a distance to maintain the fiction of former happiness…and then you return to an early setting and the years fall away and you see how bitterly unhappy you were."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Locomotion fatigue

"Extensive travelling induces a feeling of encapsulation; and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind…it might have been produced by the sameness of the landscape…"
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Tandem journeys

"Train travel animated my imagination and usually gave me the solitude to order and write my thoughts I travelled easily in two directions, along the level rails while Asia flashed changes at the window, and at the interior rim of a private world of memory and language. I cannot imagine a luckier combination."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

The railway station: A sample of society

"Indian railway stations are wonderful places for killing time in, and they are like scale models of Indian society."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Theatre on wheels

"Looking out a train in Asia is like watching an unedited travelogue without the obnoxious soundtrack…"
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Harmony on rails

"The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us…"
- R.L. Stevenson in Ordered South

Locomotive anonymity

"The conversation…derived an easy candour from the shared journey…and the certain knowledge that neither of us would see each other again."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Slow mode travelling

"All that tramping around with guidebooks…No, no, no. I just like to be still…I like to absorb a country."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

The Railway Bazaar

"…railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink. The train can reassure you in awful places – a far cry from the anxious sweats of doom aeroplanes inspire, or the nauseating gas-sickness of the long-distance bus, or the paralysis that afflicts the car passenger. If a train is large and comfortable you don’t even need a destination...
"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."
- Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar

Doing real science

"...try and give all of the information to help others judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another...The first principle is not to fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool...After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Degrees of ignorance

"Ordinary fools are all right: you can talk to them, and try and help them out. But pompous fools - guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus - that, I cannot stand!"
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Examples catalyse understanding

"I can't understand anything in general unless I'm carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go. Some people think...that I'm kind of slow and I don't understand the problem, because I ask a lot of these "dumb" questions."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Back to basics

"...the elementary things that you know very well...are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn't do any harm to think them over again...you can have a new way of looking at it."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Social irresponsibility

"You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think what you ought to accomplish...you don't have to be responsible for the world you're in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility...It's made me a very happy man ever since."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

"Can't" and "Won't"

" 'I could do that, but I won't'...is just another way of saying that you can't."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Frog in the well

"Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Fake knowledge

"I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding: they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile."
- Richard P Feynman in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"