Writing … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
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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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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You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
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The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
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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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I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I’d touched bottom.
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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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My greatest inspiration is memory.
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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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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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One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
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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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Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.
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…a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
PAUL THEROUX