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
travel memorable stories
Going slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.
travel upset bazaars
Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.
pleasure given equal
The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given.
travel vanishing lines
Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.
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.
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.
travel book reading
In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark.
magazines opposite time travel
Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of travel. It's about having a nice time on a honeymoon, or whatever.
classic discover draws home leap life metaphor travel trip unknown
What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself.
earliest grade high junior school
My earliest thought, long before I was in high school, was just to go away, get out of my house, get out of my city. I went to Medford High School, but even in grade school and junior high, I fantasized about leaving.