Quotes from Paul Auster

Não, não vou fingir que o divórcio não é uma coisa cruel. É um sofrimento indescritível, um desespero que dá cabo de nós, uma raiva diabólica, para além daquela nuvem constante de mágoa na cabeça que, pouco a pouco, se vai transformando numa espécie de luto, como se, de facto, estivéssemos a chorar por um morto

murió de neumonía, o lo que es lo mismo, murió de viejo: una muerte envidiable, a tu juicio, una vida vivida hasta bien entrada la novena década y luego, en lugar de la electrocución por un rayo, la oportunidad de asimilar el hecho de que te vas de este mundo, la ocasión de reflexionar durante un tiempo, para luego quedarse dormido y entrar flotando en el reino de la nada.

Byrne told me that you can´t fix your exact position on the earth without referring to some point in the sky.

Pour employer une expression qui m'a toujours plu, j'ai découvert que je vivais des jours empruntés.

The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others.

parecías tener un talento especial para perseguir a la persona que menos te convenía, para querer lo que no podías tener, para rendir tu corazón a chicas que no podían o no querían corresponderte.

Desde então, sob o sol radioso, sob a tempestade, ao crepúsculo, sentimos amargamente a sua falta

Contrary to what many people want to believe, the novel is in good shape these days, as healthy and vigorous as it's ever been. It's an inexhaustible form, and no matter what the pessimists say, it's never going to die... Because a novel is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy. The reader and the writer make the book together. No other art can capture the essential inwardness of human life.

Chicas medio locas, ambas deslumbrantes y autodestructivas, profundamente excitantes para ti, pero apenas llegabas a entenderlas. Las inventabas. Las utilizabas como ficticias encarnaciones de tus propios deseos, dejando de lado sus problemas e historias personales, sin comprender quiénes eran al margen de tu propia imaginación, y sin embargo, cuanto más te eludían, más apasionadamente las deseabas.

a man who is his own man is a better man than most men, even if he doesn't fit in.

We find ourselves only by looking to what we're not. You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.

te encontraste cayendo por la fisura entre el mundo y la palabra, el abismo que separa la existencia humana de nuestra capacidad de entender o expresar la verdad de la vida, y por motivos que te siguen desconcertando, aquella súbita caída por el aire vacío y sin límites te inundó de una sensación de libertad y felicidad.

the prettiest girl this side of the Danube River and the nicest person this side of anywhere.

Think of the satisfaction [...] of crawling into bed and knowing that your dreams are about to take place on top of nineteenth-century American literature. Imagine the pleasure of sitting down to a meal with the entire Renaissance lurking below your food. In point of fact, I had no idea which books were in which boxes, but I was a great one for making up stories back then, and I liked the sound of those sentences, even if they were false.

Henry je Mr. Bonesu dokazao da se ljubav ne može mjeriti. Ona uvijek negdje postoji, pa i kad je se izgubi mogu?e je prona?i novu.

the sage Lenny Millstein, who not only was an excellent basketball man but an excellent person as well, who knew how to handle fourteen-year-old boys because he understood that fourteen was the worst possible age on the calendar of human life, and therefore all fourteen-year-olds were confused and fractured beings, not one of them a child anymore and not one of them an adult, none quite right in the head or at home in his unfinished body, and in the furnace of that claustrophobic arena of

Anything was possible, and just because things happened in one way didn't mean they couldn't happen in another. Everything could be different.

The mind has a mind of its own.

Wherever he was, I was with him now. I had given him my word to say nothing, and the longer I kept his secret, the less I belonged to myself.

By and large, Willy tried to be a good son. At those rare moments when he was able to stop thinking about himself, he even made a conscious effort to be nice to her [his mum]. If they had their differences, they were less a result of personal animosity than of starkly opposing world views.

I would not go so far as to say that he was a good person … but Boris had his own set of rules and he stuck to them. Unlike everyone else I had met here, he managed to flat above his circumstances … It was as if he had imagined every possibility in advance, and therefore he was never surprised by what happened. Inherent in his attitude was a pessimism so deep, so devastating, so fully in tune with the facts, that it actually made him cheerful.

No es que escribir me produzca un gran placer, pero es mucho peor si no lo hago.

Els escriptors som éssers ferits. Per això creiem amb una altra realitat.

She's too sad to be beautiful. No one that sad can still be beautiful.