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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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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Destination
Reaching
Cease
Travel
Becomes
Living
Indistinguishable
Life
Ceases
Rewarding

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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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...a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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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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He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.
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The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.
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I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom.
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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.
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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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When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.
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The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.
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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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Tourists who go to Africa have more of a traditional experience than Africans do. A tourist goes on safari Africans don't.
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Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
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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.
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Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
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Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.
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Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
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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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