Quotes from Paul Auster

There's progress for you. A bigger and better mousetrap every month. Pretty soon, we'll all be able to kill all the mice at the same time.

the closest man can come to the feeling of eternity is by living in the present

Bir ölüm ferman? ç?karmak zaten yeterince kötüydü, ama ölmü? bir adam için çal??mak en az onun kadar kötüydü.

In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant. And

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

Quién eres tú? Y si crees que lo sabes, ¿por qué insistes en mentir al respecto?

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.

The point is: his life was not centered around the place where he lived. His house was just one of many stopping places in a restless, unmoored existence, and this lack of center had the effect of turning him into a perpetual outsider, a tourist of his own life.

Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies,

Baudelaire: Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas. In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself.

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

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?

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

Ma in una cosa è identica a sua madre: che salvo rare eccezioni, quando parla dice solo ovvietà - tutto quel repertorio di frasi fatte e idee usate che riempie le pattumiere della saggezza contemporanea. [...] Ahi, ahi, povera Rachel…proprio non ne poteva fare a meno. La mia unica figlia stava al mondo da ventinove anni e non era mai riuscita a produrre una frase originale, con un qualcosa di totalmente e irriducibilmente suo.

who seeks solitude seeks silence; who does not speak is alone; is alone, even unto death

A good sense of humor, then, a taste for the ironies of life, and an appreciation of the absurd.

Lei ha una storia, e quando una persona è abbastanza fortunata da vivere in una storia, da vivere in un mondo immaginario, i dolori di questo mondo svaniscono. Perché, fino a quando la storia continua, la realtà non esiste più

Non è cosa da poco dover ricominciare la propria vita a cinquantasette anni; e quando un uomo non dispone di altre carte che il cervello che ha nella testa e la lingua che ha nella bocca, deve pensarci bene prima di decidersi ad aprire quella bocca e parlare.

Quando hai vissuto a lungo come me tendi a pensare di aver ascoltato di tutto, di non poterti più stupire di nulla. Ti viene pure voglia di vantarti della tua esperienza del mondo e poi, ogni tanto, ti ritrovi di fronte a qualcosa che ti catapulta fuori dal bozzolo di goduta superiorità, ricordandoti da capo che della vita non capisci un bel niente.

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.

Lei ha la storia, e quando una persona è abbastanza fortunata da vivere all'interno di una storia, da vivere in un mondo immaginario, i dolori di questo mondo svaniscono. Perché fino a quando la storia continua, la realtà non esiste più.

Stars, on the other hand, were inexplicable. Not holes in the sky, not candles, not electric lights, not anything that resembled what you knew. The immensity of the black air overhead, the vastness of the space that stood between you and those small luminosities, was something that resisted all understanding. Benign and beautiful presences hovering in the night, there because they were there and for no other reason. The work of God's hands, yes, but what in the world had he been thinking?

Todos somos extraños para nosotros mismos, y si tenemos alguna sensación de quiénes somos, es solo porque vivimos dentro de la mirada de los demás.

One very big album, bound in expensive leather with a gold-stamped title on the cover - This is our life: The Austers - was totally blank inside.