One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
PAUL THEROUXSometimes 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.
More Paul Theroux Quotes
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It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
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Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.
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Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
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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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It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.
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The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
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Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
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Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn’t say that I’m a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels – and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.
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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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I think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
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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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My greatest inspiration is memory.
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You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
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…a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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Writing … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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