Paul Theroux Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Reading, People

  Paul Theroux (2014). “The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas”, p.385, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• ... Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery.

  Paul Theroux

  Art, Book, Reading

• The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Slim, Volume

  Paul Theroux (2006). “The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Writing, Marketing

  "Fiction in the Age of E-Books". "The Atlantic" Interview, www.theatlantic.com. 2010.

• A travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having a very bad time, having a miserable time, even better. You don't want to read a book about someone having a great time in the South of France, eating and drinking and falling in love. What you want to read is a book about a guy going through the jungle, going through the arctic snow, having a terrible time trying to cross the Sahara, and solving problems as they go.

  Paul Theroux

  Falling In Love, Drinking, Book

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. 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.

  Paul Theroux

  Travel, Book, Novelists

• Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.

  Paul Theroux

  Life Lesson, Book, Good Luck

  Source: www.pbs.org

• When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Uganda, Phones

• 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

  Book, Order, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Travel books are all sorts - some are autobiographies, some are about falling in love. Some are about having great meals, some are about suffering. There are as many different kinds of travel books as there are novels. People think a travel book is one thing. It's many things.

  Paul Theroux

  Falling In Love, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.

  Paul Theroux

  Running, Book, Thinking

  Interview with Michael Shapiro, www.sfgate.com. May 28, 2011.

• One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Reading, Pages

  Paul Theroux (2011). “To the Ends of the Earth: The Selected Travels of Paul Theroux”, p.131, Ivy Books

• People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, People, Threatened

  "I don't think there's genius in my writing". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. April 28, 2001.

• In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark.

  Paul Theroux

  Travel, Book, Reading

  Paul Theroux (2011). “The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

  Paul Theroux

  Travel, Book, Writing

  Interview with Michael Shapiro, www.sfgate.com. May 28, 2011.

• Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.

  Paul Theroux

  Book, Reading, Writing

  "Fiction in the Age of E-Books". "The Atlantic" Interview, www.theatlantic.com. 2010.

• Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a sense of place. Even so, I insist, the traveler invents the place. Feeling compelled to comment on my travel books, people say to me, "I went there"---China, India, the Pacific, Albania-- "and it wasn't like that." I say, "Because I am not you.

  Paul Theroux

  Strong, Book, Writing

  Paul Theroux (2001). “The Best American Travel Writing 2001”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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