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" The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project. "

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" 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

" The more you write, the more you're capable of writing. "

Paul Theroux

Writing

Capable

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely. "

" 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. "

" Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. "

" The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume. "

" 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

" The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times. "

Paul Theroux

Done

Landscape

" Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in. "

" 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. "

" I am happy being what I am. "

Paul Theroux

I Am Happy

Being

" Africa is really a place for the wealthy traveler. It's got some nice hotels, but they're very expensive hotels. It doesn't really cater to the backpacker or to the overland traveler. "

" 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. "

" I think I understand passion. Love is something else. "

" Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. "

" 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. "

" Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields or fix roofs, engineers, or car mechanics. I think lying on your back working under an oily car, that's a job. "

" If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think. "

Paul Theroux

Home

People

" People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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

Childhood

" I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader. "

" Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. 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. "