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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.

Paul Auster

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Paul Auster
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: February 3
Author
Autobiographer
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Film Director
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Poet
Screenwriter
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University Teacher
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Newark
New Jersey
Paul Benjamin
Paul Queen
Paul Benjamin Auster
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More quotes by Paul Auster

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I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happening unconsciously while I'm working that I'm not aware of, and people will point these things out to me, and I'll say, That's interesting. But I don't know what to make of it.
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Existence was bigger than just life. It was everyone's life all together, and even if you lived in Buffalo, New York and had never been more than ten miles from home, you were part of the puzzle, too. It didn't matter how small your life was.
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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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I think if we didn't contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.
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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.
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[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.
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I'm really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.
Paul Auster
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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.
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Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.
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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.
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Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.
Paul Auster
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Some people are great, and they approach each work with honesty, and that's wonderful. But when people have built up a sort of resentment or animosity for reasons that are hard to put your finger on, they read in bad faith.
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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
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There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
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And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.
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Life is deeply tragic and also very comic at the same time. It's everything at once.
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You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.
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Let me tell you, there's no better medicine than a friendly card game for sloughing off the cares of a workaday world.
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To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.
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It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
Paul Auster