Paul Theroux Quotes

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

Reputation, Asked, Gain

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

Travel, Good, Food

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
Paul Theroux

Friendship, Help, Person

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
Paul Theroux

Travel, Tourists, Travelers

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
Paul Theroux

Life, Chance, Second

I am happy being what I am.
Paul Theroux

I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.
Paul Theroux

Cannot, Days, Longer

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

Lonely, Idea, Solitude

I think I understand passion. Love is something else.
Paul Theroux

Love, Passion, Understand

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.
Paul Theroux

Book, Etiquette, Australian

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.
Paul Theroux

Rock, Moment, Star

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
Paul Theroux

Possible, Novel, Essence

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.
Paul Theroux

Life, Love, Art

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
Paul Theroux

Travel, Mind, Feeling

Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.
Paul Theroux

Mind, State, Grace

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

Good, Made, Manners

The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.
Paul Theroux

Business, Interested, Criticized

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.
Paul Theroux

Time, Travel, Someone

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

Long, Language, Sign

Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.
Paul Theroux

Life, Second, Fiction

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.
Paul Theroux

Book, Writing, Reading

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.
Paul Theroux

Life, Change, Great

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

Time, Person, Serious

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

Write, Unhappy, Order

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

Love, Twenties, Thirties

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Biography

Nationality: American

Born: April 10, 1941

Links

Find on Amazon: Paul Theroux

Cite this Page: Citation

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