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Paraguay has had a U.S. supermarket boss as its ambassador for a while. He did the job well. He was there because he wanted to be there. Rather than the British diplomat who didn't want to be there.

John Gimlette

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John Gimlette
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Wanted
Supermarkets
Wells
Diplomats
Well
Ambassadors
Boss
British
Paraguay
Rather
Diplomat
Jobs
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Didn
Ambassador

More quotes by John Gimlette

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My parents probably feel closer to the U.S. They feel America came to our rescue in the war and all that sort of thing. And for their generation the war still goes on. We still save food and little bits get scraped off and boiled out the next day.
John Gimlette
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The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.
John Gimlette
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I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.
John Gimlette
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Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.
John Gimlette
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I slightly feel, having written Paraguay and Newfoundland - and both of them have developed eccentricities through isolation - I am quite relieved to be back in France and Germany, and I want people to enjoy these books for the writing and not because they feel they can laugh - some will laugh - at these eccentric places, that's not what I intend.
John Gimlette
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We don't really listen to what the other person is saying. We have gotten used to information being in such a concentrated form all the time, and so continuously, that conversation somehow seems inadequate for a lot of people, and therefore they can't join in it. You notice how many people can't argue anymore - without getting very upset.
John Gimlette
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I have to be careful not to visit one place right after the other and write one book after the other. Because I fear writing the same book all over again. That's why I am taking a break and doing something different this time.
John Gimlette
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Paraguayans have no Italian blood and are half Guarani [Indian] blood. And the Chileans call themselves the English of South America, which actually couldn't be further from the truth.
John Gimlette
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American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.
John Gimlette
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I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.
John Gimlette
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I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.
John Gimlette
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India, to some extent, courses through my blood. My father was brought up there, and my grandfather served there, and so on. We have a very strong family affinity for the place.
John Gimlette
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A lot of books are sold and given away as presents. But who actually reads and enjoy reading?
John Gimlette
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This terrible frustration that we so often feel in the West in not being able to articulate and express ourselves.
John Gimlette
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Diplomacy was what I wanted to do. From really quite an early age and I think I had a false impression that diplomacy equals travel.
John Gimlette
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I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.
John Gimlette
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People my age and younger do think much more towards Europe. We have to fill the gap sometime - we can't think we are an empire any longer after all.
John Gimlette
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In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.
John Gimlette
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I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.
John Gimlette
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If you travel in countries like Morocco, and I say that because I have just come from Morocco, if people are shouting at each other in an argument, violence is not going to follow. That would be just so far removed.
John Gimlette