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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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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Travel
Ways
Laziest
Secret
Travellers
Earth
Traveller
Way
Bold
Time
Passings
Think
Guilty
Thinking
Passing

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The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.
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He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.
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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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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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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.
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Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
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Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.
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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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I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.
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Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
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The biggest surprise was that a country like Angola, that has so much money, that produces so much oil, would be in such a mess and so difficult to travel in. Something is almost cursed in striking oil. It's like the lottery winner who ends up broke.
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...a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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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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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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Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
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It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
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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.
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It might be said that a great unstated reason for travel is to find places that exemplify where one has been happiest. Looking for idealised versions of home-indeed, looking for the perfect memory.
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I think I understand passion. Love is something else.
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