What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books? Paul Auster More Quotes by Paul Auster More Quotes From Paul Auster In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns: Anywhere out of the world. Paul Auster bullslifeworld It's June second, he told himself. Try to remember that. This is New York, and tomorrow will be June third. If all goes well, the following day will be the fourth. But nothing is certain. Paul Auster junenew-yorktrying Stories without endings can do nothing but go on forever, and to be caught in one means that you must die before your part in it is played out. Paul Auster storiesforevermean But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been. Paul Auster takenstoriesmight In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm. A person heads in one direction, turns sharply in mid-course, stalls, drifts, starts up again. Nothing is ever known, and inevitably we come to a place quite different from the one we set out for. Paul Auster one-directiondifferentbumps Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you musn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it. Paul Auster wastelastsgone Escaping into a film is not like escaping into a book. Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination, where as you can watch a film-and even enjoy it-in a state of mindless passivity. Paul Auster escapingexercisebook As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true. Paul Auster storieslongbelieve When every card in the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win a hand is to break the rules. You beg, borrow, and steal, as the old adage goes, and if you happen to get caught in the act, at least you´ve gone down fighting the good fight. Paul Auster fightingwinninghands I woke up one day and thought: I want to write a book about the history of my body. I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began. Paul Auster motherwritingbook History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it. Paul Auster environmenttalkingcharacter In the same way, the world is not the sum of all the things that are in it. It is the infinitely complex network of connections among them. As in the meanings of words, things take on meaning only in relationship to each other. Paul Auster connectionswayworld In the old physics, three times two equals six and two times three equals 6 are reversible propositions. Not in quantum physics. Three times two and two times three are two different matters, distinct and separate propositions. Paul Auster differenttwoscience The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count. Paul Auster storytellingessentialsform Let me tell you, there's no better medicine than a friendly card game for sloughing off the cares of a workaday world. Paul Auster medicinegamesfriendly This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly - with a surging of his pulse and a frantic pounding in his head. He was about to gamble his life on that table, and the insanity of that risk filled him with a kind of awe. Paul Auster gamblingriskinsanity Each man, therefore, is the entire world, bearing within his genes a memory of all mankind. Or as Leibniz put it: ‘Every living substance is a perpetual living mirror of the universe’ Paul Auster mirrorsmenmemories I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn't understand it then, but now, now I understand it. Paul Auster importantreadingmen When you're young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound. Paul Auster readingsoundmind When the father dies, he writes, the son becomes his own father and his own son. He looks at is son and sees himself in the face of the boy. He imagines what the boy sees when he looks at him and finds himself becoming his own father. Inexplicably, he is moved by this. It is not just the sight of the boy that moves him, not even the thought of standing inside his father, but what he sees in the boy of his own vanished past. It is a nostalgia for his own life that he feels, perhaps, a memory of his own boyhood as a son to his father. Paul Auster memoriesfathermoving
