Theroux Writer Quotes & Sayings

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? "She drove me to my practice at four in the morning," etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. — Paul Theroux

When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it. — Paul Theroux

The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given. — Paul Theroux

Sometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you. — Paul Theroux

Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels. — Paul Theroux

Our fathers and grandfathers who poured over the Midwest were self-reliant, rugged, God-fearing people of indomitable courage ... They asked only for freedom of opportunity and equal chance. In these conceptions lies the real basis of American democracy. They and their fathers give a genius to American institutions that distinguished our people from any other in the world. — Herbert Hoover

Every country has the writers she requires and deserves, which is why Nicaragua, in two hundred years of literacy, has produced one writer-a mediocre poet. — Paul Theroux

The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. we live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we are afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we will lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy. — Richard Bach

The disorder in Yashar's apartment was that comfortable littering and stacking that only another writer can recognize as order - the considered scatter of papers and books a writer builds around himself until it acquires the cozy solidity of a nest. — Paul Theroux

The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth. — Paul Theroux

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. — Paul Theroux

When you join the army, you are asked to lay down your life for your country. That is a tremendous oath to take. In return, a good country should offer that soldier every possible means it can to allow that soldier to stay alive and, upon return, healthy - both mentally and physically. — Michael Winter

... feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them. — Louisa May Alcott

You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one. — Paul Theroux

The thing is, when you're dependent on others, they hold a part of your happiness in their hands. They can nurture it or crush it at any moment. Your fate doesn't belong to you. — Emma Chase

I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it. — Paul Theroux

For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer. — Paul Theroux

Curiously, Laura Warholic is one of those novels in which the characters actually read books.You don't often see this in contemporary fiction. People resent polysyllabic words, find it showing off, never look them up, refuse to play. Words are to a writer what paint is to an artist. I am amazed at how readers refuse to enjoy the out-of-the-way fact, the astonishing detail, the original thought. Style is taken as an affront by stupid and lazy people. Just say it, they say. Sure! Should I die or should I live basically sums up Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy. Why didn't he just say so!? — Alexander Theroux

The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, or having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life - the homebound writer's irritants. But also being kept waiting is the human conditon. — Paul Theroux

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. — Paul Theroux

He regarded himself as an accomplished writer - a clear sign of madness in anyone. — Paul Theroux

The only people who are not in awe of Emerson's powerful voice and well-nigh superhuman strength are the members of his own family. He is aware of this, and often complains about it; so from time to time I like to put on a little show of being intimidated. 'Proceed, my dear,' I said apologetically. — Elizabeth Peters