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
people
You need to be on your own so that you can meet people as you are, and as they are.
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.
great known lives people running schools type
The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project.
either intend people travel
I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.
based bus crossing easily train travel traveling whatever
The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all through some countries.
almost appeal columbus notion robinson travel
The appeal of travel books is also the sense that you are different, an outsider, almost like the Robinson Crusoe or Christopher Columbus notion of being the first person in a new place.
happened reliable shows travel travelers traveling writers
One of the things the 'Tao of Travel' shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them.
mission reaching time wasting
I feel as if my mission is to write, to see, to observe, and I feel lazy if I'm not reaching conclusions. I feel stupid. I feel as if I'm wasting my time.
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.
bad corps except peace running send trained typical
I think I am typical in believing that the Peace Corps trained us brilliantly and then did little more except send us into the bush. It was not a bad way of running things.
across express
The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times.
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The train passed fruit farms and clean villages and Swiss cycling in kerchiefs, calendar scenes that you admire for a moment before feeling an urge to move on to a new month
contracts extensive feeling mind traveling
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation; and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind
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.