“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, The Brooklyn Follies

“Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely.”

—Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude

“I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.”

—

Paul Auster, Moon Palace

“I walk around the world like a ghost, and sometimes I question whether I even exist. Whether I've ever existed at all.” ”

—Paul Auster, Travels in the Scriptorium

“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, The Brooklyn Follies

“Each book is a new book. I’ve never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along. The fact that I’ve written books in the past seems to play no part in it. I always feel like a beginner and I’m continually running into the same difficulties, the same blocks, the same despairs. You make so many mistakes as a writer, cross out so many bad sentences and ideas, discard so many worthless pages, that finally what you learn is how stupid you are. It’s a humbling occupation.”

—Paul Auster

“Eres un soñador, muchacho. Tienes la cabeza en la luna y me parece a mí que nunca vas a tenerla en otro sitio. No eres ambicioso, el dinero te importa un pepino, y eres demasiado filósofo para tener ningún talento artístico.”

—Paul Auster - El Palacio de la Luna

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

—Paul Auster

“Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.”

—Paul Auster

“I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.”

—Moon Palace, Paul Auster

“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, The Brooklyn Follies

“All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.”

—The Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster

“You there -- me here.”

—Paul Auster, Moon Palace
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