Paul Auster Quotes
As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.
Quotes to Explore
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I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.
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I've grown up with girls that are like Precious. I've grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we're not making it up.
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All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
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Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal.
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If I hadn't spent many years trying to be as compassionate as Mother Teresa, as positive a thinker as W. Clement Stone, as prolific a writer as Stephen King, and as good a speaker as many of the legends I have studied, I would not be as successful as I am today.
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I've planned book tours for myself, whether or not anybody wants to hear what I have to say. I've weighed in on things like what the cover looks like, what the copy looks like, how it's going to be promoted - just every aspect of it.
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I'm trying to find the balance and do, like, 'Spanglish' music or some songs in Spanish and others in English or do a translation.
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One half who graduate from college never read another book.
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That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
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I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
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I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
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I was always trying - I never wanted to let my fans down; I always wanted them to see me in my art form.
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Someone gives jewelry, and there's a bit of romance. If you buy it from a store, the store is trying to romance you. Even when I'm making the jewelry, I have to be romanced.
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Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.
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The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.
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I love being a mom. But there's a certain kind of tedium to your life when your kid is young. Writing allows you to wander when your kid is napping in a crib ten feet away. So that's the great joy of writing fiction for me.
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I adore book-to-film adaptations when they're done well, and I'm more lenient than many readers when it comes to what counts as 'done well.' For me, the most important thing is that the film maintains the spirit of the original book.
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The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
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Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book.
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The most explosive book of the twentieth century... I'm not kidding, it explodes!!
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Don't invade Iraq. Inspections work, war won't.
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I'm the guy who has everything it takes to be heavyweight champion of the world. It's not just about being great inside the ring: it's about being able to do great things outside of the ring. Not everyone has that. I love to be out there with the people.
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As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.
