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
outlandish places realized west
There are places that I've always wanted to go. First I went to Africa, and when I was there I realized there were places in Africa I really to wanted to visit: The Congo, West Africa, Mombassa. I wanted to see the deep, dark, outlandish places.
journals letters life work
Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with.
written
I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble.
loathe
I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling.
realized united
The place that interests me most, actually, is the United States. I've realized that I haven't traveled much in the States. There's a lot to see.
literary robust seem serious struck
Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.
breakfast discover hoping life morning pleasant setting spent waking worth
I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning after breakfast hoping to discover something new and repeatable, something worth writing about.
impulse mental people physical travel understand
The travel impulse is mental and physical curiosity. It's a passion. And I can't understand people who don't want to travel.
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.
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.
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.
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..