Quote

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
Write
Felt
Ever
Great
Writing
Tiny
Thing
Childhood
Think
Happened
Thinking
Lost

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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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.
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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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.
Paul Theroux
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Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
Paul Theroux
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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.
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.
Paul Theroux
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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.
Paul Theroux
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Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.
Paul Theroux
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Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.
Paul Theroux
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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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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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Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
Paul Theroux
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Everyone had an opinion and no one had a solution.
Paul Theroux
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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.
Paul Theroux
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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.
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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I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
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 sought trains I found passengers.
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