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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.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Home
Really
Think
Thinking
Like
Misanthrope
People
Writers
Stay
Certain

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.
Paul Theroux
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People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it.
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Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.
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There is no faster way of destroying a man, or mocking his ideas, than making him fashionable.
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The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.
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I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.
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A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
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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 travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.
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Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
Paul Theroux
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If people are driving you around to look at animals, that's wonderful. That's educational, but it's not necessarily enlightening and you're not finding out much about yourself.
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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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Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Paul Theroux
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Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
Paul Theroux
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He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.
Paul Theroux
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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.
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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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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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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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.
Paul Theroux