“When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.” Quote by Paul Theroux
“You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.” WritingFormerFormer Friends Author:Paul Theroux
“You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.” KnowsMaySometimesAttentionLuxuryHotelCopingLuxury Hotels Author:Paul Theroux
“I know there are writers who feel unhappy with domesticity and who even manufacture domestic turmoil in order to have something to write about. With me, though, the happier I feel, the better I write.” KnowsFeelsWritingOrderUnhappyTurmoilDomesticity Author:Paul Theroux
“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.” WritingBookHardTravelHard TimesInventingTravel Books Author:Paul Theroux
“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.” PeopleWritingBookReadingFictionActivityTinyBuyingMinoritiesFiction Writing Author:Paul Theroux
“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.” LittlesI CanReadingLossHabitPaperLettersTinyPlasticCookiesNotebookManuscriptsArchivesReading HabitsDisk Author:Paul Theroux
“Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.” YearsMadeDifferentUsedFactorsUsed To BeBritainOccasional Author:Paul Theroux
“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.” WritingTryingFirstsBookChangedBedAspectMarketingProfitDrivenCorporateDesksWriting Life1960sProcrastinatingLife Has Changed Author:Paul Theroux
“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.” BookStoriesUseThreeFourTravelFindingsMarkBackgroundsNovelistsTravelerGreat TravelTravel Books Author:Paul Theroux