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You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.

Paul Theroux

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.
PAUL THEROUX

Book Order People
The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
PAUL THEROUX

Book Slim Volume
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.
PAUL THEROUX

Book Pages Reading
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.
PAUL THEROUX

Home Memories Perfect
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
PAUL THEROUX

Feeling Mind Travel
Writing … is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
PAUL THEROUX

Competitive Persons Writing
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.
PAUL THEROUX

Home People Thinking
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.
PAUL THEROUX

Earth Secret Thinking
My greatest inspiration is memory.
PAUL THEROUX

Country Inspiration Memories People
Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It’s also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
PAUL THEROUX

Help Helping Mutual Weakness
You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
PAUL THEROUX

Need Patience Writer
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.
PAUL THEROUX

Boston Childhood Maine
I don’t think that it’s possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it’s simple.
PAUL THEROUX

Experiences Reward Simple Thinking
It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
PAUL THEROUX

Magical Place Travel Worst
I think that love isn’t what you think it is when you’re in your twenties or even thirties.
PAUL THEROUX

Emotion Love Thinking Twenties
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

Boredom Hero Novelists

You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.

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You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.

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Popular Authors

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