Particle therapy has a long and distinguished history with more than 50,000 patients having been treated, mainly with high-energy proton therapy. Particularly, for proton therapy, there is an increasing interest in exploiting the physical characteristics of charged particles for further improving the potential of radiation therapy. In this article, we review the most important interactions of charged particles with matter and describe the basic physical principles that underlie why particle beams behave the way they do and why such a behavior could bring many benefits in radiation therapy.