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To a lot of Africans, seeing an animal is a something of a rarity. So it's a paradox of this sort of parallel life. A safari is an expensive experience and it's adjacent to a place where people are having a very tough time.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Seeing
Africans
Experience
Parallel
Place
Parallels
Something
Paradox
Time
Expensive
Life
Tough
Adjacent
People
Sort
Safari
Animal
Rarity

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It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
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I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
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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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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.
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Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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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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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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The journey, not the arrival, matters the voyage, not the landing.
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Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
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