I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I don't like pictures in books. I feel that the pictures diminish the words, and the words diminish the pictures, and it… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Everyone reads a different book. That's what's interesting. Everyone sees a different film, as well. We bring our past lives to whatever… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book,… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“For me, books were not the containers of words so much as the words themselves, and the value of a given book… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“... that once you throw your life to the winds, you will discover things you had never known before, things that cannot… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Take a report. It's dry, the sentences are clunky and unfelicitous, they're just conveying information. But it seems to me that if… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Memoirs have dominated the literary scene now for ten or 20 or even 30 years: most of them seem to use the… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
It's an ethical pact I've made with myself and with the reader - not to invent. And when I can't remember, I… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
My wife is my first reader, my first line of defence I suppose. So she says, "Oh well, oh yes, it's all… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
In my books, there are a lot of people stuck in rooms. Or, conversely, out in the wide open. It seems that,… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I don't think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I woke up one day and thought: 'I want to write a book about the history of my body.' I could justify… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been… — Paul Auster Copy Share 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… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
In a sense I am able to interrogate myself, address myself from that slight distance and enter a kind of dialogical relationship… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
There are certain phrases in books of mine, and I don't know where they came from, or how I was capable of… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that.… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
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… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“[T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The only person I knew how to be with now was myself - but I wasn´t really anyone, and I wasn´t really… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
In my later novels, I systematically used the convention, and then a moment came - when did it come? With The Book… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Human beings need stories, and we're looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it's television, whether it's comic books or… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Once you finish a book, it doesn't belong to you anymore. You're giving it to other people. If something in what a… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it's not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to… — Paul Auster Copy Share
“No es que escribir me produzca un gran placer, pero es mucho peor si no lo hago.” — Paul Auster Copy Share
You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not… — Paul Auster Copy Share
The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count. — Paul Auster Copy Share
“What people saw when he appeared before them, then, was not really him, but a person he had invented, an artificial creature he could… — Paul Auster Copy Share
I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof. — Paul Auster Copy Share
As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true. — Paul Auster Copy Share
Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience. — Paul Auster Copy Share
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… — Paul Auster Copy Share
I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we… — Paul Auster Copy Share
Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second. — Paul Auster Copy Share
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… — Paul Auster Copy Share
“Most lives vanish. A person dies, and little by little all traces of that life disappear. An inventor survives in his inventions, an architect… — Paul Auster Copy Share
![“In a sense I am able to interrogate myself, address myself from that slight distance and enter a kind of dialogical relationship with myself. Because I'm saying, "Look, these are things that have happened to me, but how odd they are or how ordinary they are [is up to the reader to decide]."” quote by Paul Auster](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/233/paul-auster-351_able_in-a-sense-i-am-able-to-interrogate-myse_2745050.jpg)
![“[T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.” quote by Paul Auster](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/a62/paul-auster-351_addiction_t-he-only-luxury-he-allows-himself-is-bu_2280053.jpg)
