"Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If……" — Paul Auster
"Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely"
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Paul Auster
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173 Quotes by Paul Auster
Paul Auster has 173 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you…
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The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself…
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There's love, and certainly children you care about more than yourself. But nevertheless, we're alone in our heads.
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We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.
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Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop…
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You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.
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We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People…
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Even in New York, there are a lot of very attractive girls pedaling around. That just happens to be one…
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Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to…
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I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more 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…
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I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just…
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More All Quotes
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Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally…
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No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our…
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The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all…
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The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes…
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Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of…
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We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and…
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I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is…
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We must all make peace so that we can all live in peace.
— Jean-Bertrand Aristide
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The spirit of Ubuntu, that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent black nation in 1804, helped Venezuela,…
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As we all know, many people remain buried under tons of rubble and debris, waiting to be rescued. When we…
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Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
— Aristophanes
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A friend to all is a friend to none.
— Aristotle
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