Paul Auster Quotes
I would say that Edgar Allan Poe, [Georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, and [Jorge Luis] Borges are all boy-writers. These are writers who take... a kind of demonic joy in writing.
Quotes to Explore
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I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction, so in that sense, I'm still not a pro.
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When most people think of Woodrow Wilson, they see a dour minister's son who never cracked a smile, where in fact he was a man of genuine joy and great sadness.
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Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.
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Normally, most writers don't say, 'I'm going into a mild hypnotic trance.' Typically, they don't know how they do it. Most people, when they have a good experience writing, they're well placed in that state, which is also sometimes called a 'flow state.' If you don't have trouble, you don't have to think about it.
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I'm kind of obsessed with wedges, but I go to a regular high school, so I'm not going to be wearing Vera Wang there.
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Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
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The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.
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It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.
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I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
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Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.
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From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.
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Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.
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The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.
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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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We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.
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I'm an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps.
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I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.
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I think some days you should do a cartoon that is absolutely just for the laugh, and some days you should do a cartoon that just punches the reader right in the stomach. It's kind of nice to mix it up.
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Writing has become such an outlet for me that when I don't have it, I just get pent up.
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The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.
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You always trade blood for joy. It’s always a deal struck in the wet and the dark. Al didn’t make the rules. He just dances to the song that’s playing.
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During the Obama years, the Republicans have done an unprecedented amount of stonewalling on cabinet-and-below appointees. I would also argue that their war on judicial nominees has been way beyond what went before. Really, if the president nominated God to serve on the D.C. Court of Appeals, Mitch McConnell would threaten a filibuster.
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All of us who grew up reading comics love the memory of sitting under an apple tree with a comic book in one hand and a peanut butter sandwich in the other; the tactile sensation of the paper on the skin and so forth is part of the experience.
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I would say that Edgar Allan Poe, [Georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, and [Jorge Luis] Borges are all boy-writers. These are writers who take... a kind of demonic joy in writing.
