728 Quotes by Paul Auster

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Rather than fill me with ecstasy or gladness, this breakthrough overpowered me with dread. I didn’t know myself anymore. I was inhabited by something that wasn’t me, and that thing was so terrible, so alien in its newness, I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. I let the tears come pouring out of me, and once I started, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop.

He did not seem to be a man occupying space, but rather a block of impenetrable space in the forum of a man. The world bounced off him, shattered against him, at times adhered to him – but it never got through.

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

I’m in constant inner dialogue with my father still.

Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.

This came as a revelation, and when I finally had time to absorb it, I wondered how I had managed to live so long without learning this simple thing. I am not talking about desire so much as knowledge, the discovery that two people, through desire, can create a thing more powerful than either of them can create alone. This knowledge changed me, I think, and actually made me feel more human. By belonging to Sophie, I began to feel as though I belonged to everyone else as well.