Top 380 Paul Auster Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “In the streets, everything is bodies and commotion, and like it or not, you cannot enter them without adhering to a rigid protocol of behavior. To walk among the crowd means never going faster than anyone else, never lagging behind your neighbor, never doing anything to disrupt the flow of human traffic. If you play by the rules of this game, people will tend to ignore you.”

— Paul Auster

352. “My mind was a blithering gush, a pandemonium of rhapsodic thoughts.”

— Paul Auster

353. “It was never possible for him to be where he was. For as long as he lived, he was somewhere else, between here and there. But never really here. And never really there.”

— Paul Auster

354. “Silence is not a rewarding response, no matter what it means.”

— Paul Auster

355. “I am an ardent believer in universal happiness. I would like everyone in the world to have satisfying, fulfilling work, for everyone to earn enough to escape the menace of poverty, but I have no idea how to achieve such worthy goals. Therefore, I will pass over these matters in silence.”

— Paul Auster

356. “A meal was no more than a fragile defense against the inevitability of the next meal. Food itself could never answer the question of food; it only delayed the moment when the question would have to be asked in earnest.”

— Paul Auster

357. “The impediment to the building of Babel – that man must fill the earth – would be eliminated. At that moment it would again be possible for the whole earth to be of one language and one speech. And if that were to happen, paradise could not be far behind.”

— Paul Auster

358. “The mind cannot win over matter, for once the mind is asked to do too much, it quickly shows itself to be matter as well.”

— Paul Auster

359. “He read many books, he looked at paintings, he went to the movies. In the summer he watched baseball on television in the winter he went to the opera. More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city – never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him.”

— Paul Auster

360. “Knowledge comes slowly, and when it comes, it is often at great personal expense.”

— Paul Auster

361. “One must never own up to a fart in public. That is the unwritten law, the single most stringent protocol of American etiquette. Farts come from no one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the room can point to the culprit, the only sane course of action is denial.”

— Paul Auster

362. “The place is New York, the time is the present, and neither one will ever change.”

— Paul Auster

363. “The longer I listened, the harder I found it to leave. To get inside that music: perhaps that is a place where one could finally disappear.”

— Paul Auster

364. “These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man’s character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives.”

— Paul Auster

365. “All the happiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his room.”

— Paul Auster

366. “What he does not know is that were he to find the patience to read the book in the spirit in which it asks to be read, his entire life would begin to change, and little by little he would come to a full understanding of his situation – that is to say, of Black, of White, of the case, of everything that concerns him.”

— Paul Auster

367. “If I can give you the words you need to have, we will have a great victory.”

— Paul Auster

368. “Non ho la minima idea di cosa stia dicendo. Harry svolazza nella magniloquenza scodellando le sue enigmatiche profezie per il puro piacere narcisistico di ascoltarsi, e non vedo il senso di protrarre la conversazione.”

— Paul Auster

369. “No, there is nothing people will not do, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you will be.”

— Paul Auster

370. “Estaba buscando un sitio tranquilo para morir.”

— Paul Auster

371. “Anything for the truth. No sacrifice is too great.”

— Paul Auster

372. “Rather than punch the girl in the face, he abruptly stood up from his seat and walked away.”

— Paul Auster

373. “The book was a work of fiction. Even though it was based on facts, it could tell nothing but lies. I signed the contract, and afterwards I felt like a man who had signed away his soul.”

— Paul Auster

374. “Unless we can begin to embody the notion of change in the words we use, we will continue to be lost.”

— Paul Auster

375. “Toda vida es inexplicable. Por muchos hechos que se cuenten, por muchos datos que se muestren, lo esencial se resiste a ser contado.”

— Paul Auster

376. “How to get out of the room that is the book that will go on being written for as long as he stays in the room?”

— Paul Auster

377. “As long as we avoided the real subject, the spell could not be broken. We both slipped naturally into this kind of banter, and it became all the more powerful because neither of us abandoned the charade. We knew what we were doing, but at the same time we pretended not to.”

— Paul Auster

378. “Las historias sin final no pueden hacer otra cosa que continuar eternamente...”

— Paul Auster

379. “Behind all the surface composure, there seemed to be a great darkness: an urge to test himself, to take risks, to haunt the edges of things.”

— Paul Auster

380. “La vida nos arrastra de muchas maneras que no podemos controlar y casi nada permanece con nosotros.”

— Paul Auster

381. “When a man feels he has come to the end of his rope, it is perfectly natural that he should want to scream.”

— Paul Auster

382. “I was. Then I wasn’t anymore. Then I was. Then I wasn’t. Now who knows. If the years have taught me anything, kid, it’s that anything can happen.”

— Paul Auster

383. “The demands of words are too great for that; one meets with failure too often to exult in the occasional success.”

— Paul Auster