Quotes from Invisible

“You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“He wonders if words aren't an essential element of sex, if talking isn't finally a more subtle form of touching, and if the images dancing in our heads aren't just as important as the bodies we hold in our arms. Margot tells him that sex is the one thing in life that counts for her, that if she couldn't have sex she would probably kill herself to escape the boredom and monotony of being trapped inside her own skin. Walker doesn't say anything, but as he comes into her for the second time, he realizes that he shares her opinion. He is mad for sex. Even in the grip of the most crushing despair, he is mad for sex. Sex is the lord and the redeemer, the only salvation on earth.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“This is the kind of room poets are supposed to work in, the kind of room that threatens to break your spirit and forces you into constant battle with yourself.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“Real love...is when you get as much pleasure from giving pleasure as you do from receiving it.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“But if these unavoidable separations cause you a measure of pain, they also increase your longing for her, and perhaps that isn’t a bad thing, you decide, for you spend your days in the thrall of breathless anticipation, agitated and alert, counting the hours until you can see her and hold her again. Intense. That is the word you use to describe yourself now. You are intense. Your feelings are intense. Your life has become increasingly intense.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“Pity is such an awful, useless emotion- you have to bottle it up and keep it to yourself.The moment you try to express it, it only makes things worse.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“So weak, so little left, time running out. I will be robbed of my old age. I try not to feel bitter about it, but sometimes I can't help myself. Life is shit, I know, but the only thing I want is more life, more years on this godforsaken earth.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“You understood that there was no better thing in the world than to be kissed in the way she was kissing you, that this was without argument the single most important justification for being alive.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“Now that you are living on such intimate terms with her, Gwyn has emerged as a slightly different person... She is both funnier and more salacious than you imagined, more vulgar and idiosyncratic, more passionate, more playful, and you are startled to realize how deeply she exults in filthy language and the bizarre slang of sex... Common twentieth-century words do not interest her. She shuns the term making love, for example, in favor of older, more hilarious locutions, such as rumpty-rumpty, quaffing, and bonker bang. A good orgasm is referred to as a bone-shaker. Her ass is a rumdadum. Her crotch is a slittie, a quim, a quim-box, a quimsby. Her breasts are boobs and tits, boobies and titties, her twin girls. At one time or another, your penis is a bong, a blade, a slurp, a shaft, a drill, a quencher, a lancelot, a lightning rod, Charles Dickens, Dick Driver, and Adam Junior... In the grip of approaching orgasm, however, she tends to revert to the contemporary standbys, falling back on the simplest, crudest words in the English lexicon to express her feelings. Cunt, pussy, fuck. Fuck me, Adam. Again and again. Fuck me, Adam. For an entire month you are the captive of that word, the willing prisoner of that word, the embodiment of that word. You dwell in the land of flesh, and your cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“...cannot possibly know who you are, you imagine that she is suspicious of all young people-as a matter of principle- and therefore what she sees when she looks at you is not you as yourself but you as yet one more querrilla fighter in the war against authority, an unruly insurrectionist who has no business barging into the sanctum of her library and asking for work. Such are the times you live in,the times you both live in. She instructs you to put the cards in order, and you can sense how deeply she wants you to fail, how happy it will make her to reject your application, and because you want the job just as much as she doesn't want you to have it, you make sure that you don't fail.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“Se pregunta si las palabras no serán un elemento esencial de la sexualidad, si hablar no es en definitiva una forma más sutil de acariciar, y si las imágenes que bailan en nuestra cabeza no son igual de importantes que los cuerpos que abrazamos.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“گمان می‌کنم شرم بهتر از غرور است، بهتر است باظرافت به سایرین نزدیک بشوی تا این‌که باکمال و بی‌نقصی تحمل‌ناپذیرت همه را مرعوب کنی.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“تو برای این دنیا زیادی خوب هستی، و به همین خاطر دنیا عاقبت تو را خرد خواهد کرد.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“بااین‌حال اعتراف می‌کنم که هر بار به یاد او می‌افتم، غمی ناگهانی احساس می‌کنم. او موجودی ناممکن بود، موجود دست نیافتی، کسی که هرگز آنجا نبود، شبحی از سرزمین شایدها.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

“More often than not, what stirs the imagination is best kept in the imagination, and Gwyn is aware of that, she is wise enough to know that the distance between thought and deed can be enormous, a gulf as large as the world itself.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible

About the author

Popular quotes

“Listen, um ... in case you even feel like saying hello ...' I said, and I handed something else to her
My disposable camera. Twelve moments of my own.
She took it, and smiled like she understood, then looked at me once more. It was a look of recognition, something slowly dawning on her, my face meaning more to her then it had.
'I knew I knew you,' she said.
'I think I knew I knew you, too," I said.”
― Danny Wallace, quote from Charlotte Street

“If you cut off my hands, I'll write with my feet, and if you cut off my feet, I'll write with my nose, and if you cut that off, you may as well cut my whole head off, because no matter how you slice and dice me, you can't control what I think, or what I feel. You can keep me locked up for the rest of my life, however brief that may be. But you will never, ever own me.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from Menagerie

“Everything was so much sharper without the Link fogging me--sights, sounds, smells. It was exhilarating and shocking and terrifying. I knew my emotions had grown too strong. They were dangerous to the Community. They were dangerous to me.
But still, I wanted color. I wanted to soar with happiness even if it meant dealing with the weight of fear and guilt, too. I wanted to live. And that meant that I couldn't give the glitching up. At least not yet. Just a little bit longer.”
― Heather Anastasiu, quote from Glitch

“You think I didn't choose these clothes and this haircut specifically to avoid being stuffed into one pigeonhole or another? I'm gender fluid. Not stupid”
― Jeff Garvin, quote from Symptoms of Being Human

“He glances down at me, and a bolt of blue lightning skitters from his jaw to his temple before disappearing into his dark hair. Another bolt zigzags across the hand he rests on his sword’s hilt. They’re chaos lusters, visual reminders that the fae don’t belong in this world, and they’re beautiful, mesmerizing. With his quiet, strong confidence, he’s mesmerizing.”
― Sandy Williams, quote from The Shadow Reader

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.