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Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Glamorous
Memorable
Travel
Retrospect

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
Paul Theroux
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Writers are painful friends, and they are seldom friendly with others. They are insecure in the presence of other writers. Composers of certain kinds of music are the same--tormented and intolerant. Yet some arts not only make the artist social but make him depend upon sociability in order to succeed. Painting is one.
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.
Paul Theroux
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I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person.
Paul Theroux
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Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and therefore so penetrated with life and death.
Paul Theroux
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Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
Paul Theroux
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You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Paul Theroux
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The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.
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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Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
Paul Theroux
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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.
Paul Theroux
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Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Paul Theroux
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Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.
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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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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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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Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.
Paul Theroux
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Basically, what you find out is the limits of your patience and your strength and your capacity to adapt. You find that out in travel and being alone and being tested. So that's a great thing.
Paul Theroux
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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.
Paul Theroux
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Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
Paul Theroux