Paul Theroux Quotes

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

We will never have 100 percent certainty except in hindsight.

Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

I'm always taken aback by things that are successful that I think are just crap, and then I'm completely surprised when things I do end up being successful because you walk into things and you never know... It's just really remarkable.

Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.

I can't predict the future.

We value feeling over knowing, because you can't prove something that hasn't been done before.

As soon as I get a typical day, I'll know I'm in trouble. I like doing different things all the time.

Spoilers are inevitable.

Even just making albums - which was more within the structure that I've worked in for years - you have no idea how people will respond. You don't know if it'll be any good whatsoever. It can be terrifying.

When I know too much I get bored too fast.

That's the process of making the film and it isn't until the world puts their eyes to it that you find out if it's creating any kind of connection at all. But every single film at some stage of the film I think, "I wonder what this is going to be?"

If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

One would appear ridiculous who would say, that it is only probable the sun will rise to-morrow, or that all men must die; thoughit is plain we have no further assurance of these facts than what experience affords us.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

O! that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come; But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.

If we get total certainty, we get … bored out of our minds. So, God, in Her infinite wisdom, gave us a second human need, which is uncertainty. We need variety. We need surprise.

If one knows exactly what is going to be done, why do it?

The instant you know what the result will be, you are lost.

I would not be good with someone who did drugs. As long as I know something, I can deal with anything. I'm really good. But what I'm not good with is inconsistency. And I'm not good with not knowing.

Things I don't understand don't destroy my faith in the things I do understand.

There's something beautifully soothing about a fact — even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means.

Most things may never happen: this one will.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.

When we see an effect happen always in the same manner, we infer that it takes place by a natural necessity; as, for instance, that the sun will rise to morrow; but nature often deceives us, and will not submit to its own rules.