QUOTES by Paul Theroux
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The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to share it with the reader, not to cover up the truth but to deliver it obliquely.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
A travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having a very bad time; having a miserable time, even better.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
What strikes me about high-school reunions is the realization that these are people one has known one's whole life.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
I feel as if my mission is to write, to see, to observe, and I feel lazy if I'm not reaching conclusions. I feel stupid. I feel as if I'm wasting my time.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields or fix roofs, engineers, or car mechanics. I think lying on your back working under an oily car, that's a job.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
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.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
One of the things the 'Tao of Travel' shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
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.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
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.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy.
Quote by -Paul Theroux
Africa is really a place for the wealthy traveler. It's got some nice hotels, but they're very expensive hotels. It doesn't really cater to the backpacker or to the overland traveler.
Quote by -Paul Theroux