Paul Theroux Quotes
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If you look at a map, you see that Hawaii is in the middle of nowhere. It's 17 hours of straight flying from London. It's very far away, and sometimes you feel as if you're on another planet. But I like that. Also, that's ideal for writing.
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I think I understand passion. Love is something else.
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People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response.
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My record was so bad that I was first rejected by the Peace Corps as a poor risk and possible troublemaker and was accepted as a volunteer only after a great deal of explaining and arguing.
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You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.
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When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.
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Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.
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My greatest inspiration is memory.
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I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist, but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.
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I should start by saying that traveling in the States is a bit like traveling in Asia. You need it, it helps to have an introduction - that there is a certain network.
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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.
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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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People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.
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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.
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There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.
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I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling.
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The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times.
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Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.