728 Quotes by Paul Auster

Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination.

No one was to blame for what happened, but that does not make it any less difficult to accept. It was all a matter of missed connections, bad timing, blundering in the dark. We were always in the right place at the wrong time, the wrong place at the right time, always just missing each other, always just a few inches from figuring the whole thing out. That’s what the story boils down to, I think. A series of lost chances. All the pieces were there from the beginning, but no one knew how to put them together.

George Washington chopped down the tree, and then he threw away the money. Do you understand? He was telling us an essential truth. Namely, that money doesn’t grow on trees. This is what made our country great, Peter. Now George Washington’s picture is on every dollar bill. There is an important lesson to be learned from all this.

For the fact is that it takes a great deal of self-confidence for a person to poke fun at himself, and a person with that kind of self-confidence is rarely a fool or a bungler.

We’re outsiders, and so when we walk through the city, we’re there and not there at the same time, participating and observing simultaneously.

There’s hope for everyone. That’s what makes the world go round.

I don’t read reviews any more, but I’m told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it’s been a very split kind of response.

You find the book in the process of doing it. That’s the adventure of the job.

When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn’t waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it.