728 Quotes by Paul Auster

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It's the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.

Each book I've done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.

What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes.

Medical care for the entire country seems to me a basic right. If every other country in the West can do it, why can't we?

I met Peter Brook, the theater director, who's been based in Paris for many years at the Bouffes du Nord. I admire him tremendously. Some years ago, he was in New York, and he gave an interview with The Times, and what he said was this: "In my work, I try to capture the closeness of the everyday and the distance of myth. Because, without the closeness, you can't be moved, and without the distance, you can't be amazed." Isn't that extraordinary?

you can survive only if nothing is necessary to you

Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.