You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend. — 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
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
To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that,… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive. — 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 have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning… — 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
If you look at a map, you see that Hawaii is in the middle of nowhere. It's 17 hours of straight flying… — 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
I greatly enjoyed Tom Reiss's The Orientalist, for its mingled scholarship and sleuthing, and for so elegantly solving the puzzle of one… — 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
Writers are painful friends, and they are seldom friendly with others. They are insecure in the presence of other writers. Composers of… — 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
Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be 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
There are two places that are hard to write about. A place like Britain, England in particular, which has been written about… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as… — 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
I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there. — 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
The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
I never stay with people and I never look people up when I travel. I depend more on just chance meetings. The… — 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
When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even… — 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
Every country has the writers she requires and deserves, which is why Nicaragua, in two hundred years of literacy, has produced one… — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever. — Paul Theroux Copy Share Image
