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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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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Ever
Anywhere
Reasons
Travel
Emotion
Greatest
Makes
Place
Arrived
Reason
Described

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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I think I understand passion. Love is something else.
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Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.
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Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
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Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
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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.
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The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.
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Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.
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One of the upsides of tourism is that people begin to take themselves a little more seriously (and think their) culture is worth something. So rather than disparaging the local culture, they vitalize it.
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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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Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and therefore so penetrated with life and death.
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The conversation, like many others I had with people on trains, derived an easy candour from the shared journey, the comfort of the dining car, and the certain knowledge that neither of us would see each other again.
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I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person.
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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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One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.
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One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
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If people are driving you around to look at animals, that's wonderful. That's educational, but it's not necessarily enlightening and you're not finding out much about yourself.
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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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You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
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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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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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