Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux
Paul Edward Therouxis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 April 1941
CountryUnited States of America
home thinking people
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, I don't think.
travel vanishing lines
Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.
writing persons activity
Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
children firsts moments
The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.
life-and-death erotic rooms
Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and therefore so penetrated with life and death.
mutual-help weakness helping
Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
travel home men
... the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.
found passengers train
I sought trains; I found passengers.
wise country america
You must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.
mysterious century scholarship
I greatly enjoyed Tom Reiss's The Orientalist, for its mingled scholarship and sleuthing, and for so elegantly solving the puzzle of one of the Twentieth Century's most mysterious writers.
mozambique charity donors
Banks and donors and charities claimed to have had successes in Mozambique. I suspected they invented these successes to justify their existence.
travel book reading
In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark.
car fields fix lying people work
People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields or fix roofs, engineers, or car mechanics. I think lying on your back working under an oily car, that's a job.
associate india maine proud rural skeptical towns
Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial.