Paul Theroux Quotes

You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.

Paul Theroux

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Quotes to Explore

• I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

  

  Jackie Robinson
  • Money
  • Help
  • Mother

• Any musician - I would say 99% of musicians - needs some help along the way. Most people, even if they're self-produced, have someone else mix it, or they'll have someone else master the record. Inevitably, it's like somebody else's personality being put into your art.

  

  Washed Out
  • People
  • Art
  • Help

• I thought I'd have a career playing women in the vein of Ruth Gordon, and we've seen that type almost disappear.

  

  Parker Posey
  • Women
  • Career
  • Thought

• I was rapping in 1939. It's old. The roots are complex. And kids don't know.

  

  Quincy Jones
  • Kids
  • Know
  • Old

• I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.

  

  Barry Levinson
  • Beginning
  • Write
  • Down

• Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

  

  Tecumseh
  • People
  • Respect
  • Show

• It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.

  

  Lance Armstrong
  • Country
  • Athlete
  • Media

• My parents worked in the art world. They were really supportive of my music in that they allowed me to drop out of school and move out of our home, which not many parents would do.

  

  Ed Sheeran
  • World
  • Music
  • School

• It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.

  

  Eddie Marsan
  • Play
  • Violence
  • Suffering

• The utter incompetence of the U.N. is literally incomprehensible.

  

  Malcolm Wallop
  • Incompetence
  • Utter

• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, for there are plenty of others.

  

  Otto Rank
  • Wife
  • Neighbor
  • Others

• I want to move people the way Edith Piaf did.

  

  Laura Branigan
  • People
  • Want
  • Way

• While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every last person out there isn't dating a writer.

  

  Rachel Bloom
  • Great
  • Why
  • Awesome

• I believe that our teachers need more freedom to be creative in the classroom in order to maximize the time students spend learning, not the time they spend taking tests.

  

  Gary Herbert
  • Time
  • Believe
  • Freedom

• I believe I am a moderate Democrat: I am pro-business and also progressive.

  

  Dan Maffei
  • Business
  • Democrat
  • Progressive

• The interesting thing with fashion is that it's really a massive daydream.

  

  Karen Elson
  • Interesting
  • Fashion
  • Thing

• I'm a kid who grew up working hard.

  

  J. J. Watt
  • Up
  • Working
  • Kid

• I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

  

  Taiye Selasi
  • Up
  • Mother
  • Father

• A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur asked me a question sometime ago, he said, 'When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?' I think it's a great question. I'll tell you, in my life I've never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, because in our community, it would be viewed as shameful to be out on the street begging.

  

  Ted Cruz
  • Life
  • Time
  • Great

• We were doing press for this movie that my friends and I made for $5,000 called 'Brothers Justice,' that I also wrote and directed. And during the press of that, people kept saying, 'What's next, what's next?' And my best friend Nate and I - Nate produced it - we kept saying, 'Oh, we're gonna do a car-chase movie next.'

  

  Dax Shepard
  • People
  • Friends
  • Movie

• I think my ability to joke and laugh about things is because I'm forced to. I've been through a lot of things in my life that, if I didn't make light of it, I would literally keel over.

  

  Jonathan Van Ness
  • Life
  • Light

• There should be fireworks at last, when a dream dies.

  

  Kirby Larson
  • Dream
  • Dies
  • Fireworks

• You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.

  

  Paul Theroux
  • Friend