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
considered great
To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration.
awakens danger fears life living problem solve
A journey awakens all our old fears of danger and risk. Your life is on the line. You are living by your own resources; you have to find your own way and solve every problem on the road.
describe felt lasting life matter mood ought precisely truth
I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.
far job travel truth
The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth.
far hours ideal middle straight
If you look at a map, you see that Hawaii is in the middle of nowhere. It's 17 hours of straight flying from London. It's very far away, and sometimes you feel as if you're on another planet. But I like that. Also, that's ideal for writing.
elbow great ice maine nights plenty season
Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals.
bit certain helps traveling
I should start by saying that traveling in the States is a bit like traveling in Asia. You need it, it helps to have an introduction - that there is a certain network.
cover deliver desire experience impulse life perhaps share truth
The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to share it with the reader, not to cover up the truth but to deliver it obliquely.
downs invisible job kids life outside ups
My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life.
chances denies gives life
Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.
certainly copying seemed type
Movable type seemed magical to the monks who were illuminating manuscripts and copying texts. Certainly e-books seem magical to me.
finding novelist stories travel travels uses
I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist, but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.
islands self world
My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.
travel moving risk
The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown..