Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better. "
Paul Theroux
Strive
Days
Them
Related Quotes:
" One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else. "
Paul Theroux
Know
Fears
Anything
" I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read. "
Paul Theroux
Think
Running
People
" To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. "
Paul Theroux
Labor
Act
Writing
" Because of my capacity for listening to strangers' tales, or the details of their lives, my patience with their food and their crotchets, my curiosity that borders on nosiness, I am told that anyone traveling with me experiences an unbelievable tedium, and this is why I choose to travel alone. "
Paul Theroux
Alone
Travel
Patience
" When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there. "
Paul Theroux
Story
Once
Hong Kong
" Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions. "
Paul Theroux
Late
Bad
Decisions
" 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
" Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with. "
Paul Theroux
Work
You
Everything
" When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books. "
Paul Theroux
Africa
Short
Phone Call
" My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life. "
Paul Theroux
Know
Father
Job
" Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in. "
Paul Theroux
You
Come
Forced
" You can't separate the people from the places - although I sometimes like traveling in places where there are no people. "
Paul Theroux
People
Like
Places
" Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "
Paul Theroux
Destination
Short
Dark
" 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
" Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial. "
Paul Theroux
Proud
Roots
Know
" The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all through some countries. "
Paul Theroux
Train
You
Travel
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Bad
Volunteer
Risk
" I think I understand passion. Love is something else. "
Paul Theroux
Passion
Think
Love Is
" The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming. "
Paul Theroux
Overwhelming
Travel
Hassle
" 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
" Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation. "
Paul Theroux
Way
Conversation
Language
" Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. "
Paul Theroux
Summer
Winter
Soul
" There are two places that are hard to write about. A place like Britain, England in particular, which has been written about by everybody, and then the place that's never been written about. "
Paul Theroux
Hard
Like
Two
" I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees. "
Paul Theroux
Children
Travel
Love
" Love doesn't last. "
Paul Theroux
Love
Last
" 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
" I wanted the Peace Corps to be something very vague and unorganized, and to a large extent it was. It did not run smoothly. The consequence was that we were left alone. "
Paul Theroux
Large
Alone
Vague
" Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. "
Paul Theroux
Never
Gain
Will
" The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do. "
Paul Theroux
Been
People
Only
" People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books. "
Paul Theroux
Read
Who
People