To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do. Paul Auster More Quotes by Paul Auster More Quotes From Paul Auster As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy. Paul Auster strangelittlesboys Libraries aren't in the real world, after all. They're places apart, sanctuaries of pure thought. In this way I can go on living on the moon for the rest of my life. Paul Auster librarymoonreal You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky. Paul Auster feet-on-the-groundfeetsky In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose. Paul Auster eventspurposefacts We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others. Paul Auster who-we-areeyealiens The truth of the story lies in the details. Paul Auster detailsstorieslying Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months if not many years, of one man’s solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude Paul Auster menbookyears It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Paul Auster wrong-numbervoicenight You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you. Paul Auster crushthis-worldworld We all want to believe in impossible things, I suppose, to persuade ourselves that miracles can happen. Paul Auster impossible-thingsmiraclebelieve Our lives don't really belong to us, you see -- they belong to the world, and in spite of our efforts to make sense of it, the world is a place beyond our understanding. Paul Auster effortunderstandingworld Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world. Paul Auster shadowdifferenthero Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely Paul Auster solitudemattermen Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place. Paul Auster attachmentcitiesnew-york Artists are the people for whom the world is not enough. Paul Auster artistpeopleworld Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there. Paul Auster solitarywriting Even you, who’ve lived inside your body for 64 years, would apparently be unable to recognize your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to think of your ear or one of your eyes or elbow, also familiar to you in the context of the whole, but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others. Paul Auster eyetakenthinking Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist - except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice. Paul Auster strugglewritinghands Memory and the imagination are almost identical. It's the same place in the brain and the same thing is happening. When you think about your own life, there are no memories without place. You are always situated somewhere. I think the imagination - the narrative imagination at least - situates you in a specific space when you start to think of a story. I often use places I know. I put my characters inside rooms and houses that I'm familiar with - sometimes the houses of my parents or grandparents or previous apartments I've lived in. Paul Auster charactermemoriesthinking People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see just about all that you can handle. Paul Auster eyepeoplethinking
