728 Quotes by Paul Auster

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I've never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

We hear things, but we can't always see them, or, even if we do see them, we're not sure that we're seeing correctly. Hence: Invisible.

I haven't done any translating for decades now. It's something I did when I was young.

To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.

I don't like pictures in books. I feel that the pictures diminish the words, and the words diminish the pictures, and it doesn't work.

I think most writers can't really think about their work without a kind of revulsion. And I think that's probably why we keep going back and trying again, trying to do better each time.

I've always written by hand. Mostly with a fountain pen, but sometimes with a pencil - especially for corrections.

It's a mind going over things, revisiting things, maybe trying to refine the original perception. You have to keep going a thing over in order to make sense off it.