Quote

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.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Though
Boast
Eyewitness
Experience
Complaints
Couched
Seems
Traveler
Eyewitnesses
May
Shocking
Enrichment
Sometimes
Road
Altering
Even
Blessing
Complaint
Time
Travel
Trophies
Life
Seem
Invariably

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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
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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 Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
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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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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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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.
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Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
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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.
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The man who is tired of London is tired of looking for a parking space
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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.
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Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn't mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past.
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To a lot of Africans, seeing an animal is a something of a rarity. So it's a paradox of this sort of parallel life. A safari is an expensive experience and it's adjacent to a place where people are having a very tough time.
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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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Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and therefore so penetrated with life and death.
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The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.
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One thing about cold weather: it brings out the statistician in everyone.
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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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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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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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