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

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It's like a mathematical law, Grace.
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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.
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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.
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Each man, therefore, is the entire world, bearing within his genes a memory of all mankind. Or as Leibniz put it: ‘Every living substance is a perpetual living mirror of the universe’
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I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books.
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I think people are trying out ideas with the new technology and it's too early to say where it's going exactly. But again, whether it's digital or paper, it doesn't matter. It's words that somebody is reading and getting an experience out of that reading. That's all that really matters.
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How can you think about the world without factoring in the unforseen, the fluke event?
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I'm not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me. I confess I don't even have a computer, I don't have a cell phone.
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There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
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.
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I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we think about them so much that we name a ship after them. The imaginary lives on in the real.
Paul Auster
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I feel that the act of writing, in and of itself, is a tool towards probing that which you wouldn't without that pen in your hand. It's a strange, almost neurological phenomenon, and the words seem to generate more words - but only when you're writing. You can't do it in your head.
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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.
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Every historical moment needs the stories to be told about it.
Paul Auster
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I can never say 'why' about anything I do. I suppose I can say 'how' and 'when' and 'what.' But 'why' is impenetrable to me.
Paul Auster
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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
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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
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You can't ever approach a book as a complete virgin, certainly not if you're a critic. There is a lot of bad faith out there. That's why I finally trained myself not to look at this stuff anymore, because it doesn't do me any good to see myself either praised or attacked.
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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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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