Quote

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

Paul Auster

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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
Might
Waiting
Crossing
Sometimes
Less
Crossings
Writing
Read
Paragraph
Trying
Words
Improve
Write
Changing
Next
Wait
Seems
Type
Able
Almost
Illegible

More quotes by Paul Auster

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Stories only happen to those who are able to tell them.
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The things we remember are often things that have great emotional importance, and so they have a lasting effect.
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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.
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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.
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How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesnt believe that, about other possibilities?
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Memoirs have dominated the literary scene now for ten or 20 or even 30 years: most of them seem to use the conventions of fiction and it's astonishing how in so many of these books people seem to be able to remember conversations that took place when they were five years old and give three pages of coherent dialogue, which is utterly impossible.
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Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.
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For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.
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I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.
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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?
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There is a double rhythm in all human beings. We are binary beings - two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears. Two legs for walking. And the heartbeat thumping in our chest mirrors that.
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Each book I've done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.
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Late style gets simpler and shorter, and here, I'm getting more abundant as I get older!
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We hear things, but we can't always see them, or, even if we do see them, we're not sure that we're seeing correctly. Hence: Invisible.
Paul Auster
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I haven't done any translating for decades now. It's something I did when I was young.
Paul Auster
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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
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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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Wounds are an essential part of life, and until you are wounded in some way, you cannot become a man.
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I like the sound a typewriter makes.
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You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.
Paul Auster