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" 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
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" It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled. "
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" People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response. "
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" I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness. "
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" A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form. "
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" A place that doesn't welcome tourists, that's really difficult and off the map, is a place I want to see. "
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" 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. "
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" I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely. "
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Solitude
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" 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
" Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of travel. It's about having a nice time on a honeymoon, or whatever. "
Paul Theroux
Time
Honeymoon
Fact
" 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
" 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
" Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions. "
Paul Theroux
Late
Bad
Decisions
" A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride. "
Paul Theroux
People
Feel
Money
" You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food. So you are grateful. "
Paul Theroux
Late
Grateful
Good
" 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
" Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us. "
Paul Theroux
Fiction
Life
Second
" 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
" 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
" I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction. "
Paul Theroux
Alone
Way
Think
" The two impulses in travel are to get away from home, and the other is to pursue something - a landscape, people, an exotic place. Certainly finding a place that you like or discovering something unusual is a very sustaining thing in travel. "
Paul Theroux
Landscape
Place
Travel
" 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
" 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
" 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
" People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. "
Paul Theroux
Writing
Few
People
" 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
" I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble. "
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Books
Even
Stories
" Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent. "
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Extent
Jack
Life
" Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. "
Paul Theroux
Travel
Know
Going
" When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home. "
Paul Theroux
Wanted
Home
Make