Paul Auster

“Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.”

“I'm really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.”

“Memory, therefore, not simply as the resurrection of one’s private past, but an immersion in the past of others, which is to say: history - which one both participates in and is a witness to, is a part of and apart from. Everything, therefore, is present in his mind at once, as if each element were reflecting the light of all the others, and at the same time emitting its own unique and unquenchable radiance.”

“I hear her slip into bed with him, and I hear everything that happens after that. Sex is such a strange and sloppy business, why bother to recount every slurp and moan that ensued? Tom and Honey deserve their privacy, and for that reason I will end my report of the night's activities here. If some readers object, I ask them to close their eyes and use their imaginations.”

“I've always written by hand. Mostly with a fountain pen, but sometimes with a pencil - especially for corrections.”

“And if Amsterdam was hell, and if hell was a memory, then he realized that perhaps there was some purpose to his being lost. Cut off from everything that was familiar to him, unable to discover even a single point of reference, he saw that his steps, by taking him nowhere, were taking him him nowhere but into himself. He was wandering inside himself, and he was lost. Far from troubling him, this state of being lost because a source of happiness, of exhilaration. He breathed it into his very bones. As if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge, he breathed it into his very bones and said to himself, almost triumphantly: I am lost.”

“All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.”

“Would it be possible, he wondered, to stand up before the world and with the utmost conviction spew out lies and nonsense? To say that windmills were knights, that a barber’s basin was a helmet, that puppets were real people? Would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him? In other words, to what extent would people tolerate blasphemies if they gave them amusement? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? To any extent. For the proof is that we still read the book. It remains highly amusing to us. And that’s finally all anyone wants out of a book—to be amused.”

“When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.”

“The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any this.”

“People who don't like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that's how life is.”

“I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it's a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can't separate persona from psyche; you just can't do it.”

“מה זה בכלל אומר 'להיות עצמו'? היו לו כמה עצמיים בתוכו. אפילו עצמיים רבים. עצמי חזק ועצמי חלש, עצמי מחושב ועצמי אימפולסיבי, עצמי נדיב ועצמי אנוכי. כל כך הרבה עצמיים, שבסוף הוא היה גדול כמו כל אחד, וקטן כמו אף אחד. ואם זה נכון עבורו, זה צריך להיות נכון גם עבור כל אחד אחר. כולם הם 'כולם' ו'אף אחד' באותו הזמן.”

“כי אם זה מה שספר יכול להיות, אם זה מה שרומן יכול לעשות לליבו ולמחשבתו של אדם ולרגשותיו הכמוסים ביותר לגבי העולם, אזי כתיבת רומנים היא לבטח הדבר הטוב ביותר שאדם יכול לעשות בחיים.”

“לעולם לא תוכל לדעת אם בחרת בחירה שגויה או לא. אתה צריך שכל העובדות יהיו לפניך לפני שתדע, והדרך היחידה שכל העובדות יהיו לפניך היא להיות בשני המקומות באותו זמן – וזה בלתי אפשרי.”

“מילים שאמרה סבתך לאמך: 'אביך היה איש נפלא כל כך - אילו רק היה שונה'.”

“אתה שואל את עצמך: כמה בקרים עוד נותרו? דלת נסגרה, דלת אחרת נפתחת.”

“איך הדברים ששוב אינך משגיח בהם היו לך לפנים נוכחות ועיסוק תמידי.”

“שום יום שלא היה בו איזה רגע או אילו רגעים של הנאה גופנית.”

“כדי שתוכל לעשות מה שאתה עושה עליך ללכת.”