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Quote by Paul Auster

“I never feel I'm standing on solid ground, and I do write with a certain kind of trembling fear.”

Quote by Paul Auster

Author

Paul Auster is an American author known for his unique narrative style and philosophical reflections. His works often explore themes of identity, memory, and reality, and have won him a wide audience. more

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“As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.”

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“I am very scared at the beginning of each book, because I've never written it before. I feel I have to teach myself how to do it.”

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“The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others.”

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“I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.”

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“When young people say I want to be a novelist, I'd say, think very carefully about it. There will be very few rewards, you probably won't make any money, you probably won't become famous, and you will spend your whole life locked up in a room by yourself worrying about how to survive.”

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“I think all writers are a bit crazy; Damaged souls, incapable of doing anything else.”

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“When I am writing, even though it's hard and I do struggle often, I am happier than when I'm not writing. I feel alive. Whereas when I'm not writing, I feel like your common every-day neurotic.”

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“I feel that the act of writing, in and of itself, is a tool towards probing that which you wouldn't without that pen in your hand. It's a strange, almost neurological phenomenon, and the words seem to generate more words - but only when you're writing. You can't do it in your head.”

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“There are certain phrases in books of mine, and I don't know where they came from, or how I was capable of thinking up these formulations. It's only in the heat of composition that these things occur to you.”

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“I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.”

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