We all want to believe in impossible things, I suppose, to persuade ourselves that miracles can happen. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
A canteen I remember vividly, and maybe one other thing, I can't remember. And I knew then that he had bought them… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. 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
I've dealt with numbers all my life, of course, and after a while you begin to feel that each number has a… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
This is very rare for anyone in life to pursue something and that thing being the thing you actually most want to… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It's the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at… — 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
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
The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I feel now, in my impending old age, very lucky. I just can't tell you how lucky I feel, that I've managed… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
No one wants to be part of a fiction, and even less so if that fiction is real. — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
When young people say I want to be a novelist, I'd say, think very carefully about it. There will be very few… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Most of the boys would come with bits of equipment that their fathers had given them from their war days - helmets,… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I use things, I steal things from my life when I want to, when I need to, or when it seems appropriate.… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from… — 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
I can remember saying again and again and again, "A terrible thing has happened, but this should be a kind of wake-up… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I don't want to use quotation marks anymore, I've gone back and forth with them. In Ghosts, I didn't use them, for… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
I'm generous. I give good tips. It's just - the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don't want anything.… — 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
Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand,… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In… — Paul Auster Copy Share Image
“That's how it is with want. As long as you lack something you yearn for it without cease. if only I could… — 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
