Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
“Truth is not a saga of alarming episodes; it is a detail, usually a small one, that gives a fiction life.” — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
The monotony of staying in one place is the best thing for writing a novel. Having regular habits, a kind of security,… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip.… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
“I am a book-collector, a proud avocationist in what Eric Quayle (wrongly) asserts to be the "least vicious" of hobbies (we are… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us. -Paul Theroux, novelist (b. 1941)” — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows.… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
“The disorder in Yashar's apartment was that comfortable littering and stacking that only another writer can recognize as order - the considered… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
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… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
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 Copy Share
“sightseeing, an activity that delights the truly idle because it seems so much like scholarship, gawping and eavesdropping on antiquity, flattering oneself with the… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
Tourists who go to Africa have more of a traditional experience than Africans do. A tourist goes on safari; Africans don't. — Paul Theroux Copy Share
In a way, Che Guevara's fate was far worse than Simon Bolivar's. Guevara's collapse was complete: his intentions were forgotten, but his style was… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever. — Paul Theroux Copy Share
The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
To a lot of Africans, seeing an animal is a something of a rarity. So it's a paradox of this sort of parallel life.… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the… — Paul Theroux Copy Share
