Paul Auster Quotes

Quotes about:

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Paul Auster

Unpredictable Things, World, Want

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Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Paul Auster

Reality, Forever, Moments

Paul Auster (2014). “Collected Novels Volume 1: New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, Moon Palace”, p.601, Faber & Faber

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Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.

Paul Auster

Memories, Space, Happens

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People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see just about all that you can handle.

Paul Auster

Eye, Thinking, People

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

Paul Auster

What Matters, Matter, Trouble

Paul Auster (2009). “The Book of Illusions: A Novel”, p.32, Macmillan

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As long as you are dreaming, there is always a way out

Paul Auster

Dream, Long, Way

Paul Auster (2009). “Oracle Night: A Novel”, p.72, Macmillan

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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.

Paul Auster

Dark, Thinking, Missing

Paul Auster (2010). “Moon Palace: A Novel (Penguin Ink)”, p.187, Penguin

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Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

Paul Auster

Lying, Novelists, Fiction

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

Paul Auster

Ready, Not Ready, Ifs

Paul Auster (2014). “Collected Novels Volume 1: New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, Moon Palace”, p.601, Faber & Faber

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It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don't know half as much as I think I do.

Paul Auster

Thinking, Stupidity, Example

Paul Auster (2009). “Oracle Night: A Novel”, p.35, Macmillan

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We find ourselves only by looking to what we’re not.

Paul Auster

Paul Auster (2010). “Moon Palace: A Novel (Penguin Ink)”, p.119, Penguin

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Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part in the world around them. Whereas artists are always retreating, locking the door, and inventing other worlds.

Paul Auster

Artist, Doors, Other Worlds

Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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Stories only happen to those who are able to tell them.

Paul Auster

Stories, Able, Happens

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For the first time in his life, he stopped worrying about results, and as a consequence the terms “success” and “failure” had suddenly lost their meaning for him. The true purpose of art was not to create beautiful objects, he discovered. It was a method of understanding, a way of penetrating the world and finding one’s place in it, and whatever aesthetic qualities an individual canvas might have were almost an incidental by-product of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter into the thick of things.

Paul Auster

Beautiful, Art, Struggle

Paul Auster (2010). “Moon Palace: A Novel (Penguin Ink)”, p.131, Penguin

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We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

Paul Auster

Coincidence, Force

Paul Auster, James M. Hutchisson (2013). “Conversations with Paul Auster”, p.13, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.

Paul Auster

Always Be Happy, Seems

Paul Auster (2008). “The New York Trilogy”, p.110, Faber & Faber

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And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.

Paul Auster

Book, Writing, Common Humanity

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We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

Paul Auster

Self, Stories, Next

Paul Auster (2010). “Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, Collaborations with Artists, and Interviews”, p.460, Macmillan

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Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.

Paul Auster

Beautiful, Reading, Choices

Paul Auster (2008). “The Brooklyn Follies”, p.13, Faber & Faber

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To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

Paul Auster

Men, Toasters, World

Paul Auster (2010). “Timbuktu: A Novel”, p.59, Macmillan

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

Paul Auster

Reality, World, Plaits

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Just think it, and chances are it will happen.

Paul Auster

Thinking, Chance, Chances Are

Paul Auster (2016). “Collected Novels Volume Four”, p.145, Faber & Faber

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Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I've changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

Paul Auster

Beautiful, Years, People

"Paul Auster Meditates On Life, Death And Near Misses". Interview with Terry Gross, nwpr.org. August 23, 2012.

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Artists are the people for whom the world is not enough.

Paul Auster

Artist, People, World

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We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

Paul Auster

Reality, People, Personality

1989 In the Sunday Times,16 Apr.

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Latest quotes from interviews

"Once you finish a book, it doesn't belong to you anymore. You're giving it to other people. If something in what a writer writes can excite the imagination and the feelings of the reader, then that reader carries it around forever. Nothing is more vivid than good fiction."

- Paul Auster,

www.interviewmagazine.com, added Sep 8, 2017

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