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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.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Ever
Great
Writing
Tiny
Thing
Childhood
Think
Happened
Thinking
Lost
Write
Felt

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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I sought trains I found passengers.
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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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He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.
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Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
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One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
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I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.
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Everyone had an opinion and no one had a solution.
Paul Theroux
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A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
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You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.
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Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life.
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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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Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.
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Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
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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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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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It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
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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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You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
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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.
Paul Theroux