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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties. "

" Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. "

" You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in. "

" Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories. "

" Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. "

" Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies. "

" 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. "

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

Paul Theroux

Writing

Capable

" Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace. "

" I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something. "

" There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go. "

Paul Theroux

Never

Books

" The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness. "

" 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. "

" Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You need to be on your own so that you can meet people as you are, and as they are. "

" 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. "

" Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent. "

" 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

" People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books. "

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

" The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming. "

" I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it. "

" 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. "

" Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "