I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
Paul TherouxRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of independence for aspiring writers, contrasting it with the support typically provided by parents to athletes.
Paul Theroux's quote reflects on the different paths to success for writers compared to Olympic athletes. While athletes often receive direct support from their parents, such as being driven to practices, writers must cultivate their craft independently. Theroux advises young writers to leave home to develop their unique voice and experiences, suggesting that personal growth and exploration outside of one's comfort zone are essential for creativity and success in writing.
Themes
WritingIndependenceCreativitySuccessPersonal Growth
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speech for aspiring writers at a literary festival.
More from Paul Theroux
All quotes →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 TherouxRead
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 TherouxRead
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.
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The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.
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You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
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