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" I am happy being what I am. "
Paul Theroux
I Am Happy
Am
Being
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" Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. "
Paul Theroux
Never
Gain
Will
" You need to be on your own so that you can meet people as you are, and as they are. "
Paul Theroux
Meet
Need
Own
" 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 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
" Nyasaland was the perfect country for a volunteer. It was friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems - poverty, ignorance, disease. "
Paul Theroux
Problems
Poverty
Small
" There are places that I've always wanted to go. First I went to Africa, and when I was there I realized there were places in Africa I really to wanted to visit: The Congo, West Africa, Mombassa. I wanted to see the deep, dark, outlandish places. "
Paul Theroux
Always
Africa
Deep
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Great
Change
Life
" My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it. "
Paul Theroux
Place
Leave
Improving
" Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. "
Paul Theroux
Summer
Winter
Soul
" You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in. "
Paul Theroux
Know
Good
Find
" Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves. "
Paul Theroux
Writing
Pretty
Nerves
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Believe
I Believe
Optimism
" I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling. "
Paul Theroux
Look
Someone
Like
" 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
" Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace. "
Paul Theroux
Mind
State
Grace
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Feel
You
Look
" I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster. "
Paul Theroux
Think
Like
Serious
" A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing. "
Paul Theroux
Time
Back
Book
" 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
" A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form. "
Paul Theroux
Other
Essence
Form
" The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times. "
Paul Theroux
Done
Landscape
Like
" People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. "
Paul Theroux
Writing
Few
People
" 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
" 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
" Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us. "
Paul Theroux
Fiction
Life
Second
" The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume. "
Paul Theroux
Etiquette
Volume
Very
" People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response. "
Paul Theroux
See
Want
People
" The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given. "
Paul Theroux
Given
Writer
Equal
" It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources. "
Paul Theroux
Fall
You
Nothing
" When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it. "
Paul Theroux
Confident
Feel
Writing