728 Quotes by Paul Auster

Some things get written more quickly than others, but I can’t really measure degrees of difficulty.

There’s an imp inside me, and if I don’t let him out to make some mischief now and then, the world just gets too damned dull. I hate feeling grumpy and bored. I’m an enthusiast, and the more dangerous my life becomes, the happier I am.

The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged.

The grinding search for money can crush the spirit out of you unless you’re made of steel.

He wants to say. That is to say, he means. As in the French, “vouloir dire,” which means, literally, to want to say, but which means, in fact, to mean. He means to say what he wants. He wants to say what he means. He says what he wants to mean. He means what he says.

My characters, I find them as I’m writing. It’s quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.

You have to protect it too, you can’t let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don’t believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either.

Perhaps when we shrink down to almost nothing, we will at last find one another. Life is, after all, very difficult. Most of us die here simply because we forget to breathe.

I’ve learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.