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
hated life needed raised suggestion
I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy.
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.
chances denies gives life
Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
albert graham henry jack life
Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.
life people
What strikes me about high-school reunions is the realization that these are people one has known one's whole life.
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.
life opinion solutions
Everyone had an opinion and no one had a solution.
life-and-death erotic rooms
Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and therefore so penetrated with life and death.
death art love-life
Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.