Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
PAUL THEROUXSomeone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.
More Paul Theroux Quotes
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…a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
PAUL THEROUX -
Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.
PAUL THEROUX -
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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Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
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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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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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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.
PAUL THEROUX -
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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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.
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One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
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Writing … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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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.
PAUL THEROUX -
It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUX -
Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
PAUL THEROUX