Paul Theroux Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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Lobbying is a legitimate profession... Many congressional spouses act as lobbyists.
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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.
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I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.
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But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I'm a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that's the way I feel about people who play on sessions.
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To be thrown onto the stand-up stage is an experience that you cannot fathom until you're actually there, because there's no place to go, and everyone is looking at you and you can't even see them because of the lights. And yet you have to manage to start talking and be funny on top of it.
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I had this 'War and Peace' thing of wanting to experience war as a kind of incredible human enterprise. I even applied to Officer Candidate School. Then the practical side of me kicked in and I thought, 'I really don't want to get drafted.' So I went down to the physical and checked every psychological disorder and drug on the medical history form.
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In France, successive waves of Gaul, Visigoth, and Frank have swept over the land and have dominated it. But the fair hair and blue eyes and the clear skin of the conquering races have been submerged by the rising and overflow of the dusky blood of the original population.
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People are patronizing the theatres with renewed enthusiasm - there is an entire picnic-like attitude when families go out to see movies, which is a very good sign. They want to see larger-than-life characters on the big screen and not just watch movies on television or on DVDs.
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That's always the trick with the sequels, is how much do you repeat from the first one. Because we all get bummed out when you go see a sequel and it's beat for beat.
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Every teenager and everybody around the ages from 10 to 18 has to go through finding out who they are.
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I have to make sure that I make good choices and that if I put my name on it, it's a high-quality endeavor and that I have time to be a human being.
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From the spinners, Anil and I have been together for a long time and I respect him a lot.
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We see book-burning as a crime against humanity: it's intolerable because books represent a kind of freedom to us.
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I remember moving out to L.A. straight after college and just starting to try to write scripts and trying to get stuff off the ground.
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Living with AIDS is like always having the sword of Damocles over your head. The disease is scarier than death itself. The disease is so messy, so devastating, so pervasive. It robs you of everything you hold dear.
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No characters in 'Stay Close,' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer.
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You were not wanted. You were, at best, tolerated. You had to be constantly on your guard, like an animal in a jungle full of beasts of prey. You experienced it all within the short distance of five miles from the gates of St. Peter's to Park Station in the city.
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Fighting bitterness can be a full-time job.
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Love is so unconditional; love liberates; love is the reason why I do what I do, and so I think it is the greatest gift we have.
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When I feel nothing for a person I get scared I'm losing my humanity and that turning cold means my heart's been botoxed.
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There's always going to be someone with a bigger toy than yours.
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If my life was a song the title would be 'Naima'.
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I was a vegetarian for 10 years and a pescetarian for eight. Then I woke up one day when I was 29 and craved red meat. I'm a big believer in listening to my body's cravings.
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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.
