- Nov 07, 2020
Paul Theroux Quotes
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
- Only
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- Nov 07, 2020
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
- Death
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- Nov 07, 2020
Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.
- Feeling
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- Nov 07, 2020
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
- Lonely
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- Nov 07, 2020
It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
- Nerves
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- Nov 07, 2020
Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
- Etiquette
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
- Moment
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- Nov 07, 2020
There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.
- Good Manners
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
- Hawaii
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- Nov 07, 2020
Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.
- Late
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- Nov 07, 2020
Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.
- God
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so tiny, so lost.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.
- Place
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- Nov 07, 2020
Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
- Never
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
- Doing
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- Nov 07, 2020
A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.
- Fall
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.
- Business
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- Nov 07, 2020
The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.
- Book
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- Nov 07, 2020
Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
- Congenial
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- Nov 07, 2020
Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.
- Different
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- Nov 07, 2020
Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Never
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.
- Happy
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- Nov 07, 2020
I am happy being what I am.
- Help
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- Nov 07, 2020
Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
- Love Is
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think I understand passion. Love is something else.
- Nov 07, 2020
I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
Love doesn't last.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.
- Language
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- Nov 07, 2020
Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.
- Feel
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it.
- Feel
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- Nov 07, 2020
I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.'
- House
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- Nov 07, 2020
My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.
- Myself
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- Nov 07, 2020
You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.
- Inspiration
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- Nov 07, 2020
My greatest inspiration is memory.
- Look
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- Nov 07, 2020
I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration.
- Tell
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the things the 'Tao of Travel' shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them.
- Humble
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- Nov 07, 2020
The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project.
- Jack
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- Nov 07, 2020
Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.
- Nothing
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- Nov 07, 2020
I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields or fix roofs, engineers, or car mechanics. I think lying on your back working under an oily car, that's a job.
- Job
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- Nov 07, 2020
My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
Dentists seem to me very orderly, businesslike people who appear to become somewhat bored with the routine of their work after a period of time. Perhaps I'm wrong.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
What strikes me about high-school reunions is the realization that these are people one has known one's whole life.
- Inspire
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- Nov 07, 2020
There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.
- Mountains
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- Nov 07, 2020
The United States is a world unto itself. We have mountains, we have deserts, we have a river that equals the Yangtze River, that equals the Nile. We have the greatest cities in the world - among the greatest cities in the world.
- Problems
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- Nov 07, 2020
You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to share it with the reader, not to cover up the truth but to deliver it obliquely.
- Green
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live.
- Live
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.
- Place
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- Nov 07, 2020
A place that doesn't welcome tourists, that's really difficult and off the map, is a place I want to see.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
A journey awakens all our old fears of danger and risk. Your life is on the line. You are living by your own resources; you have to find your own way and solve every problem on the road.
- Columbus
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- Nov 07, 2020
The appeal of travel books is also the sense that you are different, an outsider, almost like the Robinson Crusoe or Christopher Columbus notion of being the first person in a new place.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
You can't separate the people from the places - although I sometimes like traveling in places where there are no people.
- Passion
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- Nov 07, 2020
The travel impulse is mental and physical curiosity. It's a passion. And I can't understand people who don't want to travel.
- Cater
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- Nov 07, 2020
Africa is really a place for the wealthy traveler. It's got some nice hotels, but they're very expensive hotels. It doesn't really cater to the backpacker or to the overland traveler.
- Most
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- Nov 07, 2020
The place that interests me most, actually, is the United States. I've realized that I haven't traveled much in the States. There's a lot to see.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
The two impulses in travel are to get away from home, and the other is to pursue something - a landscape, people, an exotic place. Certainly finding a place that you like or discovering something unusual is a very sustaining thing in travel.
- Go
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Fiction
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- Nov 07, 2020