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My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Place
Many
Years
Improving
Spent
Leave
Point
Desire
House

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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I don't look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren't there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary.
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The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it.
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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.
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Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.
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Indian enterprises seemed to work so well they produced disasters success made them burst at the seams and the disruption of unprecedented orders led to shortages and finally failure.
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You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
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A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride.
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One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.
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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.
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The traveler's boast, sometimes couched as a complaint, is that of having been an eyewitness, and invariably this experience - shocking though it may seem at the time - is an enrichment, even a blessing, one of the life-altering trophies of the road.
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Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
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The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.
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Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.
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One of the upsides of tourism is that people begin to take themselves a little more seriously (and think their) culture is worth something. So rather than disparaging the local culture, they vitalize it.
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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.
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One thing about cold weather: it brings out the statistician in everyone.
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He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.
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The journey, not the arrival, matters the voyage, not the landing.
Paul Theroux
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Going slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.
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