Paul Auster Quotes - Page 7

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• I think that sense of unreality inspired me to write the story within the book that [August] Brill tells himself, one of the stories he tells himself.

  Paul Auster

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. September 6, 2008.

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• I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

  Paul Auster

  Play, Translations

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 5, 2009.

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• We hear things, but we can't always see them, or, even if we do see them, we're not sure that we're seeing correctly. Hence: Invisible.

  Paul Auster

  Invisible, Not Sure, Seeing

  Paul Auster, James M. Hutchisson (2013). “Conversations with Paul Auster”, p.211, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.

  Paul Auster

  Writing, Mean, Trying

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• A canteen I remember vividly, and maybe one other thing, I can't remember. And I knew then that he had bought them in an army surplus store that day and he wanted to maybe enhance himself in my eyes, and say, "Well, yes, I have been in the army." Or [he] simply just didn't want to disappoint me. It could have been one or the other. But I knew that he had lied to me. And this filled me with a tremendous sort of anger towards him. At the same time, knowing he was trying to please me, so feeling good about him.

  Paul Auster

  Eye, Army, Please Me

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• When I look back at experience [with my father], all I can do is feel pity. You know, how torn he was about how to act, what to say. And it seems an important story to me.

  Paul Auster

  Father, Important, Looks

  Interview with Wayne Gooderham, www.timeout.com.

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• In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life

  Paul Auster

  Art, Mean, Today

  Paul Auster (2011). “Collected Prose”, p.505, Faber & Faber

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• After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two years.

  Paul Auster

  Taken, Writing, Past

  Paul Auster, James M. Hutchisson (2013). “Conversations with Paul Auster”, p.201, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• What used to keep me up at night was the fact that I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent. Now that I can pay the rent, I'm worrying about people I care about, you know, the people I love. The little aches and pains of my children that I, my family. That's always first.

  Paul Auster

  Children, Pain, Night

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 5, 2009.

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• I'm in constant inner dialogue with my father still.

  Paul Auster

  Father, Dialogue, Constant

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• I don't think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

  Paul Auster

  Mean, Thinking, Life Is

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• I know that what's happened in the election has changed American reality, and I understand that I have to change with it. I have to rethink how I live my life. I'm not a political essayist; I don't see that I would have any value cranking out articles for newspapers or magazines, because lots of people are doing that already.

  Paul Auster

  Reality, People, Political

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• There is a line from the Marina Tsvetaeva poem I'm so fond of: "In this most Christian of worlds/ All poets are Jews." What she means is that writers and artists are outside the normal flow of daily life, the normal flow of society in general.

  Paul Auster

  Christian, Mean, Artist

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• I barely can go shopping for clothes. I find it difficult to walk into stores. The whole thing bores me so much.

  Paul Auster

  Shopping, Clothes, Stores

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• [Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

  Paul Auster

  Thinking, World, Deeper

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas for Transatlantica, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• 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

  Gone, Lasts, Waste

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• Art is not politics. The glory of the novel is that in its essence, it is a democratic form, because it treats individuals as worthy of scrutiny. That alone is a kind of political act. A good novel about a tea party of rich women can be just as galvanizing and important to the soul as War and Peace, so I think it's not really the job of artists to do anything. They can have their opinions as private citizens, but they must continue making their art.

  Paul Auster

  Art, War, Thinking

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four months.

  Paul Auster

  Book, Taken, Years

  "A Connoisseur of Clouds, a Meteorologist of Whims: The Rumpus Interview with Paul Auster". Interview with Juliet Linderman, therumpus.net. November 16, 2009.

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• Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.

  Paul Auster

  Way, Happens, Dies

  Paul Auster (2008). “The New York Trilogy”, p.201, Faber & Faber

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• When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

  Paul Auster

  Life, Pain, Reality

  Paul Auster (2008). “The Brooklyn Follies”, p.103, Faber & Faber

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• All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that.

  Paul Auster

  Children, Children Love, Said

  Paul Auster (2010). “Moon Palace: A Novel (Penguin Ink)”, p.13, Penguin

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• Something happens, Blue thinks, and then it goes on happening forever. It can never be changed, can never be otherwise.

  Paul Auster

  Thinking, Blue, Forever

  Paul Auster (1986). “Ghosts”, Sun and Moon Press

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• He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He was alive, and the stubbornness of this fact had little by little begun to fascinate him - as if he had managed to outlive himself, as if he were somehow living a posthumous life.

  Paul Auster

  Glad To Be Alive, Littles, Facts

  Paul Auster (2008). “The New York Trilogy”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• To feel estranged from language is to lose your own body.

  Paul Auster

  Body, Language, Feels

  Paul Auster (2004). “Collected Poems”, Overlook Books

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• 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 Direction, Different, Bumps

  Paul Auster (2008). “The New York Trilogy”, p.253, Faber & Faber

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