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I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Thinking
Across
People
Heard
Books
Read
Running
Book
Never
Think
Constantly

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life
Paul Theroux
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In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937 Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.
Paul Theroux
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I believe I have a sunny disposition, and am not naturally a grouch. It takes a lot of optimism, after all, to be a traveler.
Paul Theroux
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Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.
Paul Theroux
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It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
Paul Theroux
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When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
Paul Theroux
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I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.
Paul Theroux
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The conversation, like many others I had with people on trains, derived an easy candour from the shared journey, the comfort of the dining car, and the certain knowledge that neither of us would see each other again.
Paul Theroux
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I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.
Paul Theroux
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When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.
Paul Theroux
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When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it.
Paul Theroux
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The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.
Paul Theroux
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It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
Paul Theroux
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You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.
Paul Theroux
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Luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world.
Paul Theroux
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The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.
Paul Theroux
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No one has ever described the place where I have just arrived: this is the emotion that makes me want to travel. It is one of the greatest reasons to go anywhere.
Paul Theroux
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I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
Paul Theroux
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Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.
Paul Theroux
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A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
Paul Theroux