Quotes from Paul Auster

Toen hij de kluizenaar in de zachte aarde naast het beekje begroef, besefte hij dat alles mogelijk zou zijn voor hem op deze plek. Hij had voedsel en water; hij had een huis; hij had een nieuwe identiteit voor zichzelf gevonden, een nieuw en totaal onverwacht leven. Hij kon de ommekeer bijna niet vatten. Nog geen uur geleden had hij willen sterven. Nu beefde hij van geluk, niet in staat te stoppen met lachen toen hij de ene schop na de andere op het gezicht van de dode man wierp.

As long as you're dreaming, there's always a way out.

En última instancia, una vida no es más que la suma de hechos contingentes, una crónica de intersecciones casuales, de azares, de sucesos fortuitos que no revelan nada más que su propia falta de propósito.

That work was what appealed to him most about their conversations. Tom liked having to think fast, and he found it invigorating to push his mind in unaccustomed directions for a change, to be forced to stay on his toes.

My true place in the world, it turned out, was somewhere beyond myself, and if that place was inside me, it was also unlocatable. This was the tiny hole between self and not-self, and for the first time in my life I saw this nowhere as the exact center of the world.

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

If it still shocks me to report what happened, that is because the real is always ahead of what we can imagine. No matter how wild we think our inventions might be, they can never match the unpredictability of what the real world continually spews forth. This lesson seems inescapable to me now. Anything can happen. And one way or another, it always does.

The Adlers were diminishing. They had begun to look like one of those families in which no one got to be very old.

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.

I would resurrect that person in words, and once the pages had been printed and the story had been bound between covers, they would have something to hold on to for the rest of their lives. Not only that, but something that would outlive them, that would outlive us all. One should never underestimate the power of books.

Cada hombre es distinto de todos los demás, y cuando ocurren cosas horribles, cada cual reacciona a su manera.

This came as a revelation, and when I finally had time to absorb it, I wondered how I had managed to live so long without learning this simple thing. I am not talking about desire so much as knowledge, the discovery that two people, through desire, can create a thing more powerful than either of them can create alone. This knowledge changed me, I think, and actually made me feel more human. By belonging to Sophie, I began to feel as though I belonged to everyone else as well.

Una mentira nunca puede deshacerse. Ni siquiera la verdad es suficiente.

Time makes us grow old, but it also gives us the day and the night...Lying is a bad thing. It makes you sorry you were ever born. And not to have been born is a curse. You are condemned to live outside time. And when you live outside time, there is no day and night. You don't get a chance to die.

Our hearts know what is in them, even if our mouths remain silent. And the world will know what it is, even when nothing remains in our hearts.

Se pregunta si las palabras no serán un elemento esencial de la sexualidad, si hablar no es en definitiva una forma más sutil de acariciar, y si las imágenes que bailan en nuestra cabeza no son igual de importantes que los cuerpos que abrazamos.

In the deepest, most unalterable sense, he was an invisible man. Invisible to others, and most likely invisible to himself as well. If, while he was alive, I kept looking for him, kept trying to find the father who was not there, now that he is dead I still feel as though I must go on looking for him. Death has not changed anything. The only difference is that I have run out of time.

Reason and memory are nearly always at odds.

ta strogi intelektualni trening ga je postopoma spremenil v druga?nega ?loveka. Nau?il se je kako naj od dale? gleda nase, a se vidi najprej kot ?lovek med drugimi ljudmi, potem kot zbirko naklju?nih delcov in nazadnje kot prašno zrnce- in bolj ko se je oddaljeval od tam kjer je za?el,... bližje je prihajal temu, da postane velik.

La vida se metió por medio —dos años en el ejército, trabajo, matrimonio, responsabilidades familiares, necesidad de ganar cada vez más dinero, toda esa cagada que nos deja empantanados cuando no tenemos los cojones de luchar por lo que queremos—, pero nunca perdí el interés por los libros.

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.

Si, l'amavo in tutta l'ampiezza consentita dalla legge (la legge della mia natura) [...].

But laugh laugh at me Men from around the world especially people from here For there are so many things I don't dare tell you So many things you wouldn't let me say Have pity on me

La vida nos arrastra de muchas maneras que no podemos controlar y casi nada permanece con nosotros. Muere cuando nosotros morimos, y la muerte es algo que nos sucede todos los días.