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.

In the end, the problem is not so much that people forget, but that they do not always forget the same thing. What still exists as a memory for one person can be irretrievably lost for another, and this creates difficulties, insuperable barriers against understanding.

They had come to the end of what they could talk about. Beyond that point there was nothing: the random thoughts of men who knew nothing.

Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies, and no matter how diverse they might be in their details, they all share an essential randomness in their design: this then that, and because of that, this.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

I can never say ‘why’ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‘how’ and ‘when’ and ‘what.’ But ‘why’ is impenetrable to me.

The most challenging project I’ve ever done, I think, is every single thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s never easy.

One of the odd things about being himself... was that there seemed to be several of him, that he wasn’t just one person but a collection of contradictory selves, and each time he was with a different person, he himself was different as well.

The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle.