“Most other people, your wife included, with her unerring inner compass, seem able to get around without difficulty. They know where they are, where they have been, and where they are going, but you know nothing, you are forever lost in the moment, in the void of each successive moment that engulfs you, with no idea where true north is, since the four cardinal points do not exist for you, have never existed for you. A minor infirmity until now, with no dramatic consequences to speak of, but that doesn't mean a day won't come when you accidentally walk off the edge of a cliff.”

—Paul Auster, Winter Journal

“The way out was kneeing people in the balls. I figured this out. It would end the fight in five seconds. And, as I say in the book, I got a reputation as a dirty fighter. Perhaps that's true. But it was only because I didn't want to fight. And after I did that once or twice when people confronted me, and they're writhing on the ground and the fight is over, people stopped taunting me or trying to pick fights with me, so I was free. So dirty tactics liberated me from the whole business.”

—Paul Auster reveals his secret to getting out of fighting as a boy

“Because, you see, in writing, the goal is not to write beautiful things. Not even elegant things. No, the goal is to say something meaningful, something that burns through literature, life, and everything, and gives you some feeling that you’re confronting something essential about what it means to be alive.”

—Paul Auster, in conversation with Paul Holdengräber at LIVE this past October. They discussed his evocative memoir, Winter Journal, and the fragments of his life that still pervade his thoughts. Full program here.

“I keep having this feeling like I'm right on the verge of some discovery. Some brilliant observation on the tip of my tongue that never comes, that always gets pushed aside by the light of the day or the reindeer. I guess I probably always have the feeling of being right on the verge, almost there but never there, always almost. Perhaps that's "Life"... craning to see over the ridge but it keeps rounding until the only verge we ever get to surpass is dying. Probably even if I did get some observation about love, virtue, and the world off my tongue it would just lead to another verge.”

—Phil Elverum - Dawn (winter journal)

paul. auster.

“Speak now before it is too late, and then hope to go on speaking until there´s nothing more to be said. Time is running out, after all. Perhaps it is just as well to put aside your stories for now and try to examine what it has felt like to live inside this body from the first day you can remember being alive until this one. A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenomenology of breathing.”

thank you mr. auster.

Play

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”

—Paul Auster, Winter Journal

You think that it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.

Paul Auster - Winter Journal

“This has been the story of your life. Whenever you come to a fork in the road, your body breaks down, for your body has always known what your mind doesn’t know. Your body has always borne the brunt of your fears and inner battles.”

—Paul Auster - Winter Journal

“Always lost, always striking out in the wrong direction, always going around in circles. You have suffered from a lifelong inability to orient yourself in space, and even in New York, the easiest of cities to negotiate, the city where you have spent the better part of your adulthood, you often run into trouble. Whenever you take the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan (assuming you have boarded the correct train and are not traveling deeper into Brooklyn), you make a special point to stop for a moment to get your bearings once you have climbed the stairs to the street, and still you will head north instead of south, go east instead of west, and even when you try to outsmart yourself, knowing that your handicap will set you going the wrong way and therefore, to rectify the error, you do the opposite of what you were intending to do, go left instead of right, go right instead of left, and still you find yourself moving in the wrong direction, no matter how many adjustments you have made. Forget tramping alone in the woods. You are hopelessly lost within minutes, and even indoors, whenever you find yourself in an unfamiliar building, you will walk down the wrong corridor or take the wrong elevator, not to speak of smaller enclosed spaces such as restaurants, for whenever you go to the men's room in a restaurant that has more than one dining area, you will inevitably make a wrong turn on the way back and wind up spending several minutes searching for your table. Most other people, your wife included, with her unerring inner compass, seem able to get around without difficulty. They know where they are, where they have been, and where they are going, but you know nothing, you are forever lost in the moment, in the void of each successive moment that engulfs you, with no idea where true north is, since the four cardinal points do not exist for you, have never existed for you. A minor infirmity until now, with no dramatic consequences to speak of, but that doesn't mean a day won't come when you accidentally walk off the edge of a cliff.”

—Paul Auster, Winter Journal.

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else. Speak now before it is too late, and then hope to go on speaking until there is nothing more to be said. Time is running out, after all. Perhaps it is just as well to put aside your stories for now and try to examine what it has felt like to live inside this body from the first day you can remember being alive until this one. A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenomenology of breathing.”

—Paul Auster, Winter Journal.

“I think if we didn't contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive. 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

(x)

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”