Paul Auster Quotes & Sayings (Page 7)

“When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.”

“With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can't get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch. It's an incredibly tedious process.”

“Human beings need stories, and we're looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it's television, whether it's comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.”

“For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.”

“I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.”

“I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don't know what you're doing.”

“You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.”

“I can never say 'why' about anything I do. I suppose I can say 'how' and 'when' and 'what.' But 'why' is impenetrable to me.”

“I really have no interest in myself.”

“I think New York has evolved in my work just the way the city has.”