Famous Quotes by Paul Auster

“The truth of the story lies in the details.”

“The moon people do not eat by swallowing food but by smelling it. Their money is poetry - actual poems, written out on pieces of paper whose value is determined by the worth of the poem itself.”

The purpose of literature is to expand our understanding of the world, to open up new possibilities.

Life is made up of stories, the stories we tell and the stories we believe.

The world is a puzzle, and each of us is a piece.

Writing is an act of discovery. You start with a blank page and you end up somewhere you never would have imagined.

Money’s important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don’t have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

There’s hope for everyone. That’s what makes the world go round.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important.

Each book I’ve done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

Everyone has a story to tell. It's just a matter of finding the right words.

Reading a good book can be like traveling to a different universe.

Chance is an element of life. What I try to do is study what I call the mechanics of reality as carefully as I can.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.