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...a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Indicate
Artists
Society
Artist
Might
Without

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A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
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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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Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
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Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
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Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
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The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.
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Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.
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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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I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
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Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.
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My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.
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I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom.
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Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
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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.
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The journey, not the arrival, matters the voyage, not the landing.
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When I write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so tiny, so lost.
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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.
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Tourists who go to Africa have more of a traditional experience than Africans do. A tourist goes on safari Africans don't.
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I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.
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Everyone had an opinion and no one had a solution.
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