“Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“They had come to the end of what they could talk about. Beyond that point there was nothing: the random thoughts of men who knew nothing.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal, and it no longer mattered where he was.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“Quinn froze. There was nothing he could do now that would not be a mistake. Whatever choice he made--and he had to make a choice--would be arbitrary, a submission to chance. Uncertainty would haunt him to the end. At that moment, the two Stillmans started on their way again. The first turned right, the second turned left. Quin craved an amoeba's body, wanting to cut himself in half and run off in two directions at once. (Chapter 7)”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“Would it be possible, he wondered, to stand up before the world and with the utmost conviction spew out lies and nonsense? To say that windmills were knights, that a barber’s basin was a helmet, that puppets were real people? Would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him? In other words, to what extent would people tolerate blasphemies if they gave them amusement? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? To any extent. For the proof is that we still read the book. It remains highly amusing to us. And that’s finally all anyone wants out of a book—to be amused.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“And that's finally all anyone wants out of a book- to be amused”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“If some saw the Indians as living in prelapsarian innocence, there were others who judged them to be savage beasts, devils in the form of men. The discovery of cannibals in the Caribbean did nothing to assuage this opinion. The Spaniards used it as a justification to exploit the natives mercilessly for their own mercantile ends. For if you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him. It was not until 1537, with the papal bull of Paul III that the Indians were declared to be true men possessing souls.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“The telephone was not his favorite object, and more than once he had considered getting rid of his. What he disliked most of all was its tyranny. Not only did it have the power to interrupt him against his will, but inevitably he would give in to its command.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“I have come to New York because it is the most forlorn of places, the most abject. The brokenness is everywhere, the disarray is universal. You have only to open your eyes to see it. The broken people, the broken things, the broken thoughts. The whole city is a junk heap.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“If you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“What will happen when there are no more pages in the red notebook?”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“So...what are you working on now?"
“Right now, an essay about Don Quixote.”
“One of my favorite books.”
“Mine too.”
“What’s the gist?”
“It has to do with the authorship of the books.”
“Is there any question?”
“I mean the book inside the book Cervantes wrote, the one he imagined he was writing.”
“Ah.”
“Cervantes claims he is not the author, that the original text was in Arabic.”
“Right. It’s an attack on make-believe, so he must claim it was real.”
“Precisely. Therefore, the story has to be written by an eyewitness yet Cid Hamete Benengeli, the acknowledged author, never makes an appearance. So who is he? Sancho Panza is of course the witness – illiterate, but with a gift for language. He dictated the story to the barber and the priest, Don Quixote’s friends. They had the manuscript translated into Arabic. Cervantes found the translation and had it rendered back into Spanish. The idea was to hold up a mirror to Don Quixote’s madness so that when he finally read the book himself, he would see the error of his ways. But Don Quixote, in my view, was no mad. He only pretended to be. He engineered the collaboration, and the translation from Arabic back into Spanish. I like to imagine Cervantes hiring Don Quixote in disguise to decipher the story of Don Quixote.”
“But why did Quixote go to such lengths?”
“He wanted to test the gullibility of man. To what extent would people tolerate blasphemies, lies, and nonsense if they gave them amusement? The answer: to any extent. For the book is still amusing us today. That’s finally all anyone wants out of a book. To be amused.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“Anything for the truth. No sacrifice is too great.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“You can't hate something so violently unless a part of you also loves it.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“Time makes us grow old, but it also gives us the day and the night...Lying is a bad thing. It makes you sorry you were ever born. And not to have been born is a curse. You are condemned to live outside time. And when you live outside time, there is no day and night. You don't get a chance to die.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“The impediment to the building of Babel—that man must fill the earth—would be eliminated. At that moment it would again be possible for the whole earth to be of one language and one speech. And if that were to happen, paradise could not be far behind.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
Paul Auster
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date February 3, 1947
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“They come. Sooner than I'd thought, more than I'd even begun to fear. They come looking for death.
And Death is psyched to see 'em.”
― Joss Whedon, quote from Fray
“She belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a ressurection of beauty there is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, quote from Elizabeth and Her German Garden
“You aren’t going to die,” Kiernan whispered through the darkness.
We sat in one of the bedchambers for pilgrims, me on the cot and Kiernan on the floor. He was sitting with his knees bent, elbows resting on them. If I looked at him, I knew I would see his eyes flash even in the dark. So I leaned my head back against the stone wall and said nothing.
“She might not have meant you,” he continued. “It could be Orianne, or even the real Nalia.”
That did make me look at him. “Great,” I said sarcastically. “So we find the real Nalia and then somehow get her killed. That would certainly be doing the kingdom a favor.”
― Eilis O'Neal, quote from The False Princess
“Assholes are like weeds, a bitch to get rid of and when you do another one grows back in its place.”
― Jonathan Kellerman, quote from When the Bough Breaks
“Lord, I pray that You would enable (husband’s name) to let go of his past completely. Deliver him from any hold it has on him. Help him to put off his former conduct and habitual ways of thinking about it and be renewed in his mind (Ephesians 4:22-23). Enlarge his understanding to know that You make all things new (Revelation 21:5). Show him a fresh, Holy Spirit–inspired way of relating to negative things that have happened. Give him the mind of Christ so that he can clearly discern Your voice from the voices of the past. When he hears those old voices, enable him to rise up and shut them down with the truth of Your Word. Where he has formerly experienced rejection or pain, I pray he not allow them to color what he sees and hears now. Pour forgiveness into his heart so that bitterness, resentment, revenge, and unforgiveness will have no place there. May he regard the past as only a history lesson and not a guide for his daily life. Wherever his past has become an unpleasant memory, I pray You would redeem it and bring life out of it. Bind up his wounds (Psalm 147:3). Restore his soul (Psalm 23:3). Help him to release the past so that he will not live in it, but learn from it, break out of”
― Stormie Omartian, quote from The Power of a Praying Wife
The Giving Tree
Wuthering Heights
The Da Vinci Code
Memoirs of a Geisha
Alice's Adventures i...
The Picture of Doria...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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