728 Quotes by Paul Auster

Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part in the world around them. Whereas artists are always retreating, locking the door, and inventing other worlds.

I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.

We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the twilight, ever since.

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

It became a habit of mine never to leave the house without a pencil in my pocket.

When I think of Tokyo Story, yeah, it is like a novella. That doesn't mean it's not great. Some of my favorite Tolstoy works are his novellas.

I think if we didn't contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

I was born just after the end of World War II, and with my friends in our little suburban backyards in New Jersey, we used to play war a lot. I don't know if boys still play war, they probably do, but we were thrusting ourselves into recent history and we were always fighting either the Nazis or the Japanese.

It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.