I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books. — 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
While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them. And there was a period… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Escaping into a film is not like escaping into a book. Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise… — 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
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
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
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
I project myself so deeply into the characters in novels that I'm not thinking about my own life. — 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
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
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
I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don't know what you're doing. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
You can't ever approach a book as a complete virgin, certainly not if you're a critic. There is a lot of bad… — 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
“Little by little, as you came to know her better in the weeks that followed, you discovered that eye to eye on… — paul auster Copy Share Image
All my novels are very much directly related to my inner life, even though I'm inventing characters, even though it's fiction, even… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“I learned that books are never finished, that it is possible for stories to go on writing themselves without an author.” — 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 tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every… — 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
“Life got in the way -- two years in the army, work, marriage, family responsibilities, the need to earn more and more… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels. — 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 Image
“No es que escribir me produzca un gran placer, pero es mucho peor si no lo hago.” — 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, it's not… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“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 Image
I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
