Quotessence
Home / Authors / Paul Auster
Paul Auster

Paul Auster Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingWritingBookIfsWorldPeopleWayStoriesNovelFeelsWantKindKnowsMenTryingSeemsHappensI CanDifferentFiction

Famous Paul Auster Quotes

“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.”

IfsThinkingYearsWholeBodyEyeTakenPiecesFeetEarsPhotographYour BodyFamiliarAliensWho We AreIsolatedThink Of YouElbows
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“I wanted to do something different. Therefore, the first person I thought would have been too exclusionary. It would have said me, me, me, me, me. I, I, I, I, I. As if I were pushing away my experiences from the experiences of others. Because basically what I was trying to do was show our commonality. I mean to say, in the very ordinariness of what I recount I think perhaps the reader will find resonances with his or her own life.”

IfsThinkingTryingFirstsMeanPersonsHas BeensSaidDifferentShowsWantedReaderPushingFirst PersonResonanceCommonalityOrdinarinessPushing Away
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“I say at the very end of "Winter Journal" that I do dream about my father often. I think I have a tremendous compassion for him, which has grown over the years. A certain kind of pity for him also in that he was so unrealised as a human being, so dogged, and so shut-off from people in many ways. You know, I've been writing another book, and it's another non-fiction autobiographical work, kind of a compliment to "Winter Journal", and it's just finished.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWayWritingYearsHumansKindBookEndsDreamCertainFatherHuman BeingsFictionCompassionWinterFinishedPityComplimentJournalNon Fiction
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“Most of the boys would come with bits of equipment that their fathers had given them from their war days - helmets, canteens, binoculars, these kinds of things - that leant a kind of authenticity to the games we were playing. But, of course, my father never gave me anything. So I began to question him. You know, Why don't you have anything from the war? And I think he was...embarrassed to tell me he hadn't fought, because, you know, little boys want to turn their fathers into heroes, and he didn't want to be diminished in my eyes.”

ThinkingKnowsWantKindLittlesWarEyeTurnsCoursesFatherGamesGivenBitsBoysHeroAuthenticityEmbarrassedEquipmentLittle BoysHelmetBinocularsCanteen
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. I want them to be free to discover it in their own good time. I think reading an intimate memoir by your father - or an intimate autobiographical work, whatever we want to call this thing - you have to come at it at the right moment, so I'm certainly not foisting it upon them.”

ThinkingWantChildrenMomentsReadingFatherHavensWinterMemoirMy ChildrenIntimateGood TimesJournalRight Moment
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“I still believe we wasted a golden opportunity to make significant changes in our country. I think people in America would have been ready and willing to do it, but the Bush administration took a kind of simplistic, almost moronic approach to it, all because people were so afraid.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveKindHas BeensStillsCountryAmericaOpportunityWillingReadyApproachSignificantGoldenOur CountryAdministrationI Still BelieveSignificant ChangeGolden Opportunity
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“Autobiographical writings, essays, interviews, various other things... All the non-fiction prose I wanted to keep, that was the idea behind this collected volume, which came out about few years ago. I didn't think of Winter Journal, for example, as an autobiography, or a memoir. What it is is a literary work, composed of autobiographical fragments, but trying to attain, I hope, the effect of music.”

ThinkingWritingTryingYearsIdeasWantedBehindsFictionEffectsExampleYears AgoWinterVariousMemoirInterviewsProseVolumeJournalAutobiographyEssaysFragmentsNon FictionLiterary WorksWriting Essays
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail.”

ThinkingWayWritingWellsKindTwoFactsHouseDifferencesFictionFailingWrittenNew YorkExampleBuildingBrokenSummerTablesGreenWinterExperimentsMessMaking A DifferenceJournalBroken DownVermontShackLeviathan
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper.”

ThinkingFeelsWritingI CanHandsTypePaperComfortableComputerStonesCrossesFingersPensOld ManPencilsInkTypewritersManualsKeyboardsGrippingTablets
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“Just the fact that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote by such a large number gives some validation to the impulse to stand firm. If we don't, I think within a year administration is pretty much going to dismantle American society as we've known it. I'm not sure that we're able to stop it from happening, but I don't think people should just roll over and passively watch it happen.”

PeopleThinkingGivingVoteClintonImpulseFirmNot SureStand Firm
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingKindArtImportantWarSoulPoliticalArtistIndividualPartyOpinionNovelRichGloryArt IsDemocraticWorthyTeaTea Party
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“Generally, I don't want to do things. I feel lazy and unmotivated. It's only when an idea grabs hold of me and I can't get rid of it, when I try not to think about it and yet it's ambushing me all the time. I'm thrown up against a wall. The idea is saying to me, "You have to pay attention to me because I am going to be the future of your life for the next year or two or five." Then I submit. I get into it. It's something that becomes so necessary to me that I can't live without doing that project.”

ThinkingTryingAttentionWallPay AttentionLazySubmit
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.”

ThinkingWritingMindKindBookFeelingsLanguageMysterious
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingSometimesCharacterHouseParentImaginationMemoriesBrainFamiliarApartmentGrandparent
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.”

ThinkingGivingFeelsEyeAbleFeltWalksBehindsSeeingStreetsMovementEqualLeavingObligationWanderEmptinessReducingWandering Aimlessly
Author:Paul Auster
Create image