Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I don't look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren't there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary. "
Paul Theroux
Live
Down
Understand
Related Quotes:
" I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely. "
Paul Theroux
Solitude
Phone
Lonely
" I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning after breakfast hoping to discover something new and repeatable, something worth writing about. "
Paul Theroux
Morning
Life
Breakfast
" People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. "
Paul Theroux
Writing
Few
People
" 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 write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so tiny, so lost. "
Paul Theroux
Lost
Me
Childhood
" 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
" Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me. "
Paul Theroux
Seem
Who
Type
" People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response. "
Paul Theroux
See
Want
People
" I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read. "
Paul Theroux
Think
Running
People
" 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
" 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
" Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves. "
Paul Theroux
Writing
Pretty
Nerves
" The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.' "
Paul Theroux
Hope
Work
Moment
" 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
" Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation. "
Paul Theroux
Weakness
Person
Help
" The place that interests me most, actually, is the United States. I've realized that I haven't traveled much in the States. There's a lot to see. "
Paul Theroux
See
Me
Place
" There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live. "
Paul Theroux
Live
World
See
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Book
Serious
Me
" I am happy being what I am. "
Paul Theroux
I Am Happy
Am
Being
" It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled. "
Paul Theroux
Lonely
Expensive
Principled
" I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy. "
Paul Theroux
Life
Job
Happy
" I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling. "
Paul Theroux
Look
Someone
Like
" You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you. "
Paul Theroux
People
Worse
You
" Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent. "
Paul Theroux
Extent
Jack
Life
" Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. "
Paul Theroux
Winter
Recovery
Preparation
" 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
" The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness. "
Paul Theroux
Made
Good Manners
Them
" 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