I think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
PAUL THEROUXThe realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate’s career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter.
More Paul Theroux Quotes
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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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Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
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Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
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…a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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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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Sometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you.
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The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate’s career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter.
PAUL THEROUX -
I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
PAUL THEROUX -
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.
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One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
PAUL THEROUX -
You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
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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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Writing … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUX -
My greatest inspiration is memory.
PAUL THEROUX






