Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" A place that doesn't welcome tourists, that's really difficult and off the map, is a place I want to see. "
Paul Theroux
Place
See
Want
Related Quotes:
" One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else. "
Paul Theroux
Know
Fears
Anything
" To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. "
Paul Theroux
Labor
Act
Writing
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Desire
Truth
Think
" Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I had various schemes: one was to be a psychiatrist, another was tropical medicine. "
Paul Theroux
Mind
Medical
School
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Routine
People
Wrong
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Stories
Places
Finding
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Greatest
Mountains
Nile
" I do not want to be young again. "
Paul Theroux
Young
Want
Again
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Introduction
Need
Saying
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Travel
Life
My Life
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Think
Place
Me
" Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. "
Paul Theroux
Travel
Know
Going
" The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity. "
Paul Theroux
Sort
Peace Corps
Peace
" The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times. "
Paul Theroux
Done
Landscape
Like
" Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. 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. "
Paul Theroux
Mark
Great
Travel
" You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend. "
Paul Theroux
You
About
Former
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
City
Thought
School
" I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling. "
Paul Theroux
Look
Someone
Like
" Television cannot film corruption. Television cannot spend five days on a rattling railway train, talking endlessly. Television needs excitement, it needs an angle, it needs a 'sound bite. "
Paul Theroux
Corruption
Train
Talking
" A travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having a very bad time; having a miserable time, even better. "
Paul Theroux
Shoes
Travel
You
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Yourself
Me
Life
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Day
Life
Writing
" Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves. "
Paul Theroux
Writing
Pretty
Nerves
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Unhappy
Write
Feel
" The travel impulse is mental and physical curiosity. It's a passion. And I can't understand people who don't want to travel. "
Paul Theroux
Passion
Curiosity
Want
" I've never spent a whole year in one place without leaving. "
Paul Theroux
Without
Place
Never
" An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed. "
Paul Theroux
Been
Geography
Up
" The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming. "
Paul Theroux
Overwhelming
Travel
Hassle
" I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose. "
Paul Theroux
Truth
Truth Is
You
" I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better. "
Paul Theroux
Strive
Days
Them