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 THEROUXMen in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
More Paul Theroux Quotes
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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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Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
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…a society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists.
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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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Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.
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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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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.
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The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
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You can’t want to be a writer. You have to be one.
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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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One of the cardinal principles of Buddhism, the principle of neglect.
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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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My greatest inspiration is memory.
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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.
PAUL THEROUX