Quotes from Paul Auster

He who lives for an encounter with the unseen becomes the instrument of the seen.

times i think u were the most cherished trophy i had, but sometimes i think i was the game that you played.

We are not where we are, he finds, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out

Toute la scène avait quelque chose d'imaginaire. J'étais conscient qu'elle était réelle, mais en même temps c'était mieux que la réalité, plus proche d'une projection de ce que j'attendais de la réalité que tout ce qui m'étais arrivé auparavant. Avec le temps, je commençai à remarquer que les bonnes choses m'arrivaient que lorsque j'avais renoncé à les espérer.

The best thing about being fifteen is that you don't have to be fifteen for more than a year.

Once you turn against yourself, it's hard not to believe that everyone else is against you, too

So weak, so little left, time running out. I will be robbed of my old age. I try not to feel bitter about it, but sometimes I can't help myself. Life is shit, I know, but the only thing I want is more life, more years on this godforsaken earth.

love was not a quantifiable substance. There was always more of it somewhere, and even after one love had been lost, it was by no means impossible to find another.

He has been marked by the past, and once that happens, nothing can be done about it. Something happens, Blue thinks, and then it goes on happening forever. It can never be changed, can never be otherwise.

Nadie puede decir de dónde proviene un libro, y menos que nadie la persona que lo escribe. Los libros nacen de la ignorancia , y si continúan viviendo después de escritos es sólo en la medidad en que no pueden entenderse.

People pushed by force of habit, pushed for the pure pleasure of pushing, and they would go on pushing until you showed them you were willing to push back, at which point you would earn their respect.

He already understand that the world consisted of two realms, the visible and the invisible, and that the things he couldn't see were often more real than the things he could.

The telephone was not his favorite object, and more than once he had considered getting rid of his. What he disliked most of all was its tyranny. Not only did it have the power to interrupt him against his will, but inevitably he would give in to its command.

El único acto íntimo entre dos extraños que todavía es posible, es el de la lectura

Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination.

No one can ever amount to anything in this life without someone else to believe in him.

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.

Intellectuals suck, Nathan. They are the most boring people in the world.

A crisscross of light and shadow began to form on the pavement in front of him, and it was a beautiful thing to behold, he felt, a small, unexpected gift on the heels of such sadness and pain.

Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies, and no matter how diverse they might be in their details, they all share an essential randomness in their design: this then that, and because of that, this.

You can't hate something so violently unless a part of you also loves it.

When a man walks into a room and you shake hands with him, you do not feel that you are shaking hands with him. Death changes that. This is the body of X, not this is X. The syntax is entirely different. Now we are talking about two things instead of one, implying that the man continues to exist, but only as an idea, a cluster of images and memories in the minds of the other people. As for the body, it is no more than flesh and bones, a heap of pure matter.

and if he could survive the experience without completely losing heart, then perhaps there was some hope for him after all. By sticking with the cab, he wasn't trying to make the best of a bad situation. He was looking for a way to make things happen, and until he understood what those things were, he wouldn't have the right to release himself from his bondage.

But money, of course, is never just money. It's always something else, and it's always something more, and it always has the last word.