For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity. - Paul Auster 1 Share Now -
The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all. - Paul Auster 2 Share Now -
I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them. - Paul Auster 3 Share Now -
I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went. - Paul Auster 4 Share Now -
Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done. - Paul Auster 5 Share Now -
I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn't think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape. - Paul Auster 6 Share Now -
All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children. - Paul Auster 7 Share Now -
I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table. - Paul Auster 8 Share Now -
