Quote

I think if we didn't contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

Paul Auster

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Auster
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: February 3
Author
Autobiographer
Essayist
Film Director
Linguist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Paul Benjamin
Paul Queen
Paul Benjamin Auster
Alive
Didn
Would
Think
Thinking
Awfully
Contradict
Tedious
Boring

More quotes by Paul Auster

Image
We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
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
Image
No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself
Paul Auster
Image
Medical care for the entire country seems to me a basic right. If every other country in the West can do it, why can't we?
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It often happens that things are other than what they seem, and you can get yourself into trouble by jumping to conclusions.
Paul Auster
Image
Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.
Paul Auster
Image
I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we think about them so much that we name a ship after them. The imaginary lives on in the real.
Paul Auster
Image
In my life, I've lived in very different kinds of places - very tiny rooms when I was young. And you do learn to cope with it. The funny thing is, as you begin to inhabit larger places, it's very interesting how quickly you adapt to your space. What seems enormous at first becomes natural after a few weeks.
Paul Auster
Image
For one reason or another, I became a passionate reader when I was very little. As soon as I could read, I wanted to read.
Paul Auster
Image
Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.
Paul Auster
Image
I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.
Paul Auster
Image
If you're not ready for everything, you're not ready for anything.
Paul Auster
Image
You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.
Paul Auster
Image
Betty died of a broken heart. Some people laugh when they hear that phrase, but that's because they don't know anything about the world. People die of broken hearts. It happens every day, and it will go on happening to the end of time.
Paul Auster
Image
I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happening unconsciously while I'm working that I'm not aware of, and people will point these things out to me, and I'll say, That's interesting. But I don't know what to make of it.
Paul Auster