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Time Quotes by Paul Auster

68 Time quotes by Paul Auster

All Time quotes Paul Auster’s page

A sudden urge to write pushes the writer to capture thoughts before they disappear. The collection describes how awareness can hit abruptly, how a short walk can refresh the mind, and how the past can mark us forever. It also points out that every historical moment needs a story to be told.

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I'm living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

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Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.

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Every historical moment needs the stories to be told about it.

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“But that was the beauty of this particular game. The moment you lost, you won.”

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Paintings. Or the collapse of time in images.

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Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

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“...feelings were always feelings, subjectively true one hundred percent of the time...”

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“Do you know what happened the last time a nation listened to a bush?" Honey asks. No one says a word. "Its…

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The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the…

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“I want to talk about happiness and well being, about those rare, unexpected moments when the voice in your head goes silent…

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“times i think u were the most cherished trophy i had, but sometimes i think i was the game that you played.”

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After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two…

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“Everything solid for a time, and then the sun comes up one morning and the world begins to melt.”

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“It's just that we shared a certain language, and when she talked to me about her past, I understood her without having…

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History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character…

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“He has been marked by the past, and once that happens, nothing can be done about it. Something happens, Blue thinks, and…

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I don't think of myself as a metafictional writer at all. I think of myself as a classic writer, a realist writer,…

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“Thoughts are real', he said. 'Words are real. Everything human is real, and sometimes we know things before they happen, even if…

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“So weak, so little left, time running out. I will be robbed of my old age. I try not to feel bitter…

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“...and while all people were bound together by the common space they shared, their journeys through time were all different, which meant…

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As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way…

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“These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear.…

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This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly…

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My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. I…

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No one was to blame for what happened, but that does not make it any less difficult to accept. It was all…

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“The big event that rips through the heart of things and changes life for everyone, the unforgettable moment when something ends and…

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Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the…

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“It was all a matter of missed connections, bad timing, blundering in the dark. We were always in the right place at…

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“I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live…

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“It was one of the most sublimely exhilarating moments of my life. I was half a step in front of the real,…

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“...cannot possibly know who you are, you imagine that she is suspicious of all young people-as a matter of principle- and therefore…

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“Always lost, always striking out in the wrong direction, always going around in circles. You have suffered from a life-long inability to…

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“It is also true that memory sometimes comes to him as a voice. It is a voice that speaks inside him, and…

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“If I hit that tree with this stone, Rousseau says, all will go well in my life from now on. He throws…

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“In his little speech to Alice, Humpty Dumpty sketches the future of human hopes and gives the clue to our salvation: to…

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“Everywhere I went during those days, the streets were filled with talk of the Mets. It was one of those rare moments…

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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…

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I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere…

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“There is no escape from this. Either you do or you don't. And if you do, you can't be sure of doing…

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All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to…

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More by Paul Auster

“On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to…

“No es que escribir me produzca un gran placer, pero es mucho peor si no lo hago.”

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…

I'm not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me.

The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count.

“What people saw when he appeared before them, then, was not really him, but a person he had invented, an artificial creature he could…

I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.

As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true.

Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience.

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…

I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we…

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

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…

“Most lives vanish. A person dies, and little by little all traces of that life disappear. An inventor survives in his inventions, an architect…

“and cut down many trees. When the Humans”