728 Quotes by Paul Auster


  • Author Paul Auster
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    The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any this.

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  • Author Paul Auster
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    [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.

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  • Author Paul Auster
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    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 a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.

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  • Author Paul Auster
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    Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.

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  • Author Paul Auster
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    For a man who finds life tolerable only by staying on the surface of himself, it is natural to be satisfied with offering no more than his surface to others.

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  • Author Paul Auster
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    Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.

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  • Author Paul Auster
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    Maar is lezen juist niet de kunst van het zelf zien, van het oproepen van beelden in je eigen hoofd? En heeft de schoonheid van het lezen niet alles te maken met de stilte die je omgeeft zodra je je in het verhaal hebt gestort, het stemgeluid van de schrijver die weerklinkt in je hoofd en alle andere geluiden buitensluit?

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