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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

Related Quotes:

" Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. "

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

" 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

Serious

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

" The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity. "

" An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed. "

Paul Theroux

Been

Geography

" I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble. "

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

" 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. "

" One of the things the 'Tao of Travel' shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them. "

" I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read. "

" 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. "

" The appeal of travel books is also the sense that you are different, an outsider, almost like the Robinson Crusoe or Christopher Columbus notion of being the first person in a new place. "

" Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. "

" My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones. "

" 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. "

" I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling. "

Paul Theroux

Look

Someone

" 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. "

" My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions. "

" 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. "

" I feel as if my mission is to write, to see, to observe, and I feel lazy if I'm not reaching conclusions. I feel stupid. I feel as if I'm wasting my time. "

" I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction. "

" Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial. "

" What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself. "

Paul Theroux

Yourself

Life