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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

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Paul Auster
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: February 3
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More quotes by Paul Auster

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Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place.
Paul Auster
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When the publisher here in America wanted to put the word memoir on the title page [of 'Winter Journal'] and on the cover, I said, No, no, no, no, no, no. No genre whatsoever. It's an independent work not really connected to those things at all.
Paul Auster
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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.
Paul Auster
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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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My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.
Paul Auster
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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
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As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy.
Paul Auster
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He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.
Paul Auster
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I think all writers are a bit crazy Damaged souls, incapable of doing anything else.
Paul Auster
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The weird world rolls on... meaning that through all the ups and downs, all the travails that we go through, all the horrors, all the wars, all the deaths, all the cruelties, there's still something that keeps us wanting to wake up the next morning and go on with our lives - to make children, to fall in love, to continue humanity.
Paul Auster
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If you're not ready for everything, you're not ready for anything.
Paul Auster
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The real is always way ahead of what we can imagine.
Paul Auster
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As long as you are dreaming, there is always a way out
Paul Auster
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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
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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?
Paul Auster
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In the same way, the world is not the sum of all the things that are in it. It is the infinitely complex network of connections among them. As in the meanings of words, things take on meaning only in relationship to each other.
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.
Paul Auster
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I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.
Paul Auster
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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
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Late style gets simpler and shorter, and here, I'm getting more abundant as I get older!
Paul Auster