Paul Theroux Quotes

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

James Franco has turned his life into a real art project. In my opinion, that's the way to live.

I think writing a solo play was the most liberating thing I ever did.

I have been a nomad for most of my thirties, even creatively.

I don't like to be labeled, to be anything. I've made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it's counter-productive.

I've been in LA for 5 years now, and it's been very freeing creatively.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.

I could have been on a path that led to different, more traditional teen romance, and 'Nip/Tuck' shook me loose from any generalization I might have been forced into. It helped me understand I wanted to take on things that were edgier, more challenging and riskier.

Theater opened up a whole new world for me. It was a freedom I'd never known before.

I liked Amy Winehouse a lot. I liked the way she did what she wanted, and she wasn't fazed about the press being on her back. I loved her songs so much.

I'm interested in the kind of anti-establishment ethos that goes with making an independent movie. I like to bring that to studio films - usually to the consternation of the studios.

All of my experiences modeling, acting, doing theater, it's all in the work now. And the work freed me to transform myself.

At school, I was basically a loner, it was hard until I was 15 or so. Then I went to art school and was gifted with freedom to do the things I really wanted to do.

Wherever the wind blows me, I'll go! My eventual goal is to have enough experience to produce something on my own.

I think it was really important for me before I 'debuted myself' in front of the world to have a private life with my imagination and my writing for several years. That also made it so I didn't feel desperate for someone to find me.

Writing, for me, has always been a way of not having a career.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words.

Everyone has doors in the living room of their lives that they assume are locked. Doors that lead to artistic expression. People say "I have no talent -- I can't dance or sing or paint or write poetry or play an instrument." More often than not the doors are not locked, just closed. One may turn the handle, open the door and pass through into a larger life space.

Art = a mad search for individualism.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

I'm not a critic. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a philosopher. Arguing that punk has run its course is like saying painting ran its course after the Renaissance. Punk is an idea. It's freedom. And it'll be around 200 years from now for the people who want it.

A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.

When you really do feel like an alien, and you really do feel like a space creature, and you really do feel you want to experiment and dress up and be different every day, to find what looks best but never stick to one thing... Just the fact that that was offered to those kids during that time is pretty remarkable.