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No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other material to write about.
Paul Auster
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Paul Auster
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: February 3
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More quotes by Paul Auster
Artists are the people for whom the world is not enough.
Paul Auster
I haven't done any translating for decades now. It's something I did when I was young.
Paul Auster
I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn't understand it then, but now, now I understand it.
Paul Auster
I don't like pictures in books. I feel that the pictures diminish the words, and the words diminish the pictures, and it doesn't work.
Paul Auster
How can you think about the world without factoring in the unforseen, the fluke event?
Paul Auster
The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.
Paul Auster
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
Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I've changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.
Paul Auster
I'd go nuts. Because people look at the same passage and one person will say this is the best thing he's ever read, and another person will say it's absolutely idiotic. I mean, there's no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.
Paul Auster
Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people - more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true - in certain rare, isolated cases.
Paul Auster
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
I think if we didn't contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.
Paul Auster
It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.
Paul Auster
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
Reason and memory are nearly always at odds.
Paul Auster
I started out in life as a poet, I was only writing poetry all through my 20s, it wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them.
Paul Auster
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
He knew that his wings could ignite at any moment, but the closer he came to touching the fire, the more he sensed that he was fulfilling his destiny. As he put it in his journal that night: If I mean to save my life, then I have to come within an inch of destroying it.
Paul Auster
Every historical moment needs the stories to be told about it.
Paul Auster
Chance is an element of life. What I try to do is study what I call the mechanics of reality as carefully as I can.
Paul Auster