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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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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Geography
Oblivion
Trip
Solitary
Travel
Line
Lines
Pinched
Vanishing

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.
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Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.
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The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
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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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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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Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.
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Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.
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I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something.
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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.
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The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction.
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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.
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Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
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The Colombians are good-tempered people. They are used to waiting for buses that are late, used to riding buses and trains that do not arrive.
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The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.
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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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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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Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
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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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Tourists who go to Africa have more of a traditional experience than Africans do. A tourist goes on safari Africans don't.
Paul Theroux
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I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.
Paul Theroux