Quote

I was born just after the end of World War II, and with my friends in our little suburban backyards in New Jersey, we used to play war a lot. I don't know if boys still play war, they probably do, but we were thrusting ourselves into recent history and we were always fighting either the Nazis or the Japanese.

Paul Auster

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Still
Friends
Backyards
Littles
Fighting
Nazi
Little
Born
Jersey
Play
War
Japanese
Always
History
Recent
World
Ends
Boys
Thrusting
Stills
Probably
Suburban
Used
Either
Nazis

More quotes by Paul Auster

Image
There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
The things we remember are often things that have great emotional importance, and so they have a lasting effect.
Paul Auster
Image
I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.
Paul Auster
Image
Dismantling the architecture of my discontent
Paul Auster
Image
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.
Paul Auster
Image
I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I've learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.
Paul Auster
Image
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.
Paul Auster
Image
As Siri says, who is deeply involved with neuroscience, emotion consolidates memory, and I think that's true.
Paul Auster
Image
We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.
Paul Auster
Image
It would be a terrible world if everyone was an artist. Nothing would get done!
Paul Auster
Image
The ideal reader's the same, and I suppose this person has never had a face or a gender or an age. It's just some kind of unknown other who will be sympathetic and read each word carefully and understand what I'm writing about. I suppose every writer feels this.
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
I like the sound a typewriter makes.
Paul Auster
Image
You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you.
Paul Auster
Image
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
Image
The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is what novels are then I want to be a novelist.
Paul Auster