Quote

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

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
Follow
Inside
Stories
Feel
Surge
Feels
Unfold
Going
Compelling
Nowhere
Lead

More quotes by Paul Auster

Image
Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.
Paul Auster
Image
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.
Paul Auster
Image
I haven't done any translating for decades now. It's something I did when I was young.
Paul Auster
Image
Libraries aren't in the real world, after all. They're places apart, sanctuaries of pure thought. In this way I can go on living on the moon for the rest of my life.
Paul Auster
Image
Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.
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
In fact, writing, especially writing autobiographical works, and this is actually the fourth time I've done it, each time I've done it I've felt deeply immersed in the material as I'm doing it, and then it's over and everything is the same.
Paul Auster
Image
Something happens, Blue thinks, and then it goes on happening forever. It can never be changed, can never be otherwise.
Paul Auster
Image
For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.
Paul Auster
Image
I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.
Paul Auster
Image
I do not repeat conversations that I can't remember. And it's something that irritates me a great deal, because I think most memoirs are false novels.
Paul Auster
Image
Books demand more. You have to be a more active participant.
Paul Auster
Image
When you're young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.
Paul Auster
Image
Often it's true that films just go right through us. You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it's not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.
Paul Auster
Image
I never feel I'm standing on solid ground, and I do write with a certain kind of trembling fear.
Paul Auster
Image
There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
Paul Auster
Image
I feel now, in my impending old age, very lucky. I just can't tell you how lucky I feel, that I've managed to first of all, stay alive this long, in reasonably good health, and that I've been able to do what I want to do.
Paul Auster
Image
I've learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.
Paul Auster
Image
[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.
Paul Auster
Image
As Siri says, who is deeply involved with neuroscience, emotion consolidates memory, and I think that's true.
Paul Auster