Paul Theroux Quotes
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A place that doesn't welcome tourists, that's really difficult and off the map, is a place I want to see.
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I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness).
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Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
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You must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.
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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.
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I sought trains; I found passengers.
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I've never spent a whole year in one place without leaving.
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Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.
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The travel impulse is mental and physical curiosity. It's a passion. And I can't understand people who don't want to travel.
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Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with.
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The trouble with cameras is that people see them a mile away.
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Even the most distant and exotic place has its parallel in ordinary life.
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You can't separate the people from the places - although I sometimes like traveling in places where there are no people.
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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.
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My earliest thought, long before I was in high school, was just to go away, get out of my house, get out of my city. I went to Medford High School, but even in grade school and junior high, I fantasized about leaving.
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I believe I have a sunny disposition, and am not naturally a grouch. It takes a lot of optimism, after all, to be a traveler.
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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.
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To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration.
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I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.
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Photographers are failed painters.
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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.
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The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all through some countries.
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Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me.
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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.