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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
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Paul Auster
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: February 3
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Newark
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Paul Benjamin
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More quotes by Paul Auster
I see myself as anybody, as everybody I'm not just telling the story of my life to give the reader a picture of who I am.
Paul Auster
You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you.
Paul Auster
Guilt kept me going. It was impossible not to blame myself for what had happened, but even guilt was a comfort. It was a human feeling, a sign that I was still attached to the same world that other men lived in.
Paul Auster
There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
Paul Auster
I was extremely shy. And I simply didn't know how to go about it. It seemed a lot easier to write than to make films. All I needed was a pencil and a piece of paper, whereas filmmaking was something I had no access to.
Paul Auster
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
Some people are great, and they approach each work with honesty, and that's wonderful. But when people have built up a sort of resentment or animosity for reasons that are hard to put your finger on, they read in bad faith.
Paul Auster
We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.
Paul Auster
Everyone reads a different book. That's what's interesting. Everyone sees a different film, as well. We bring our past lives to whatever work of art we're experiencing at that moment, and that's what makes it interesting. It's not mathematics. There are different answers for different people.
Paul Auster
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
Wounds are an essential part of life, and until you are wounded in some way, you cannot become a man.
Paul Auster
Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.
Paul Auster
Books demand more. You have to be a more active participant.
Paul Auster
I would say that Edgar Allan Poe, [Georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, and [Jorge Luis] Borges are all boy-writers. These are writers who take... a kind of demonic joy in writing.
Paul Auster
To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.
Paul Auster
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
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
Eighteen is a terrible age, and while I walked around with the conviction that I was somehow more grown-up than my classmates, the truth was that I had merely found a different way of being young.
Paul Auster
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
As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.
Paul Auster