Top Paul Theroux Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Paul Theroux Biography

Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best-known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). He has published numerous works of fiction, some of which were adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name.

Read about Paul Theroux in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Paul Theroux Quotes

There has to be a measure of difficulty or problem-solving in travel for it to be worthwhile.

Difficulty, Measure, Problem, Problem Solving, Travel, Worthwhile

For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer.

Complacency, Felt, Freedom, Maintaining, Respectable, Years

When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be as free as possible to be spontaneous. You also need to be lonely, because loneliness is a great teacher, too.

Lonely, Teacher, Loneliness, Free, Alone

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.

Book, Reading, Writing, Fiction, Tiny

The monotony of staying in one place is the best thing for writing a novel. Having regular habits, a kind of security, but especially no big surprises, no shocks.

Big, Habits, Kind, Surprise, Writing

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

Corps, Drag, Howard, Maturity, Peace

Truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes.

Travel, Landscape, Worst, Landscapes, Take

Writers are painful friends, and they are seldom friendly with others. They are insecure in the presence of other writers. Composers of certain kinds of music are the same--tormented and intolerant. Yet some arts not only make the artist social but make him depend upon sociability in order to succeed. Painting is one.

Art, Depend, Insecure, Make, Order, Painful

In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.

Australia, Japan, Next Week, 1952, France, Malaysia

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.

Hear, Long, People, Trouble, Writing

When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home.

Home, Make, Money, Wanted

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

Funny, Inspirational, Place, Terms, Travel, Works

Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash--suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious.

Cash, Incurious, Mean, People, Unbelieving

The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.

Behavior, Civilized, Compassion, Measure

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

Line, Lines, Pinched, Travel, Vanishing

Home is always the impossible subject, multilayered and maddening.

Home, Impossible, Multilayered, Subject, Subjects

Travel books are all sorts - some are autobiographies, some are about falling in love. Some are about having great meals, some are about suffering. There are as many different kinds of travel books as there are novels. People think a travel book is one thing. It's many things.

Falling In Love, Book, Thinking, Meals, Books, Kinds

One of the upsides of tourism is that people begin to take themselves a little more seriously (and think their) culture is worth something. So rather than disparaging the local culture, they vitalize it.

Thinking, People, Tourism, Vitalize, Culture

. . . Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery.

Art, Book, Foolery, Person, Politics, Reading

The man who is tired of London is tired of looking for a parking space

London, Looking, Men, Space, Tired

1