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" I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling. "
Paul Theroux
Look
Someone
Like
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" I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better. "
Paul Theroux
Strive
Days
Them
" People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it. "
Paul Theroux
Waiting
Wait
Sick
" 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
" Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us. "
Paul Theroux
Fiction
Life
Second
" I think I am typical in believing that the Peace Corps trained us brilliantly and then did little more except send us into the bush. It was not a bad way of running things. "
Paul Theroux
Believing
Bad
I Am
" It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled. "
Paul Theroux
Lonely
Expensive
Principled
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Train
Maine
Boston
" Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. "
Paul Theroux
Only
Glamorous
Retrospect
" I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble. "
Paul Theroux
Books
Even
Stories
" 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
" I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties. "
Paul Theroux
You
Your
Think
" The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity. "
Paul Theroux
Sort
Peace Corps
Peace
" 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. "
Paul Theroux
Problem
Life
Road
" 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
" 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
" There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment. "
Paul Theroux
Think
Hat
Moment
" 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 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you. "
Paul Theroux
People
Worse
You
" 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
" Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation. "
Paul Theroux
Way
Conversation
Language
" 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 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
" 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
" What strikes me about high-school reunions is the realization that these are people one has known one's whole life. "
Paul Theroux
Life
Realization
People
" 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