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Paul Theroux Quotes

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best-known work is The Great Railway Bazaar . 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.

He is the father of British authors and documentary filmmakers Marcel Theroux and Louis Theroux, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux, and uncle of the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. April 1941   •   Other names Paul Edward Theroux
Paul Theroux photo

Works

The Great Railway Bazaar
The Old Patagonian Express
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
Paul Theroux: 32   quotes 1   like

Famous Paul Theroux Quotes

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

Paul Theroux

“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.”

Paul Theroux

New York Times (July 28, 1976).

“Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life.”

Paul Theroux book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Source: Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

“I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.”

Paul Theroux book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Source: Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

“travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.”

Paul Theroux book The Great Railway Bazaar

Source: The Great Railway Bazaar

Paul Theroux Quotes about life

“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

Hockney’s Alphabet, D is for Death, ed. Stephen Spender (1991)
Book published to raise money for AIDS victims.

“Even the most distant and exotic place has its parallel in ordinary life.”

Paul Theroux

Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

“I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness).”

Paul Theroux

"Being a Man" (1983), from Sunrise with Seamonsters: Travels and Discoveries, 1964-84 (Houghton Mifflin, 1986, , 384 pages), p. 309.

Paul Theroux Quotes about people

“You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.”

Paul Theroux

Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

“You must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.”

Paul Theroux book The Old Patagonian Express

The Old Patagonian Express (1979)

“The trouble with cameras is that people see them a mile away.”

Paul Theroux

Picture Palace (1978)

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

Paul Theroux book The Old Patagonian Express

Chapter 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=vrtURNBqzRMC&q=%22Tightfisted+people+are+as+mean+with+friendship+as+they+are+with+cash+suspicious+unbelieving+and+incurious%22&pg=PA94#v=onepage, The Passenger Train to Tapachula
The Old Patagonian Express (1979)

Paul Theroux Quotes

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

Paul Theroux

“Paul Theroux, Restless Writer Of the Rails“ by Paul Hendrickson, Washington Post (September 20, 1979).

Travel

“Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way”

Paul Theroux

Source: Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents

Way , Confidence , Failure , Cooking

“The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.”

Paul Theroux

Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Behavior

“You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back”

Paul Theroux

Variant: You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Way , Time , Personality

“Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.”

Paul Theroux

Observer (London, October 29, 1989).

“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 book The Old Patagonian Express

The Old Patagonian Express (1979)

Food

“The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.”

Paul Theroux book The Great Railway Bazaar

Source: The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), Ch. 28.

Perfection

“I sought trains; I found passengers.”

Paul Theroux book The Great Railway Bazaar

Source: The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), Ch. 1.

Training

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

Paul Theroux

Sunrise with Seamonsters (1985).

Peace

“The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate’s career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter.”

Paul Theroux

Tarzan Is an Expatriate, quoted in Patrick Marnham's Dispatches from Africa, ch. 1 (1981).

Country , Forgetting

“Assigning human personalities to animals is the chief trait of the pet owner—the doting dog-lover with his baby talk, the smug stay-at-home with a fat lump of fur on her lap who says, "Me, I'm a cat person," and the granny who puts her nose against the tin cage and makes kissing noises at her parakeet. Their affection is often tinged with a sense of superiority. Deer and duck hunters never talk this way about their prey, though big game hunters— Hemingway is the classic example — often sentimentalize the creatures they blow to bits and then lovingly stuff to hang on the wall.”

Paul Theroux

Living With Geese.

Dogs , Way , Home , Game

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

Paul Theroux book The Great Railway Bazaar

Source: The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), Ch. 21.

Travel , Feeling

“Photographers are failed painters.”

Paul Theroux

Picture Palace (1978)

““Mustn’t grumble” was the most English of expressions. English patience was mingled inertia and despair. What was the use? But Americans did nothing but grumble! Americans also boasted. "I do some pretty incredible things” was not an English expression. "I’m fairly keen" was not American. Americans were showoffs — it was part of our innocence — we often fell on our faces; the English seldom showed off, so they seldom looked like fools.”

Paul Theroux book The Kingdom by the Sea

The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around Great Britain, ch. 1 (1983).

Fools , Parting , Patience , Despair

“Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.”

Paul Theroux

Living With Geese http://smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/december/geese.php?page=1, Smithsonian Magazine (December 2006).

Lovers , Animals

“In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there has been too much of) with ideas (of which there are too few. I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.”

Paul Theroux

Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

World , Way , Idea

“Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn't mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past.”

Paul Theroux

Remember the Cicadas and the Stars? http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0102-63.htm, International Herald Tribune (January 2, 2007).

Past

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