Paul Auster Quotes

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

It's about communication, no matter how impossibly hard your art is to understand and how much of an ivory tower or high horse you get on, it's still basically communication or why are you doing it?

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

Creating means living.

I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.

Do not wait another day to become fully engaged in your life, to learn to love and to forgive, and to live with greater purpose & meaning.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

Art is a spiritual practice. We may not, and need not, do it perfectly.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

No matter how much you try and make your surroundings suitable for creativity, if the enviornment inside of you isn't creatively healthy then you won't be able to make the art you want. Being in tune with yourself and your inner truth, being at peace in there, is the best way to nurture your creativity. Then you can even make a bad enviornment a good one.

Music, art, writing - it gives us a sense of who we are, a sense of our history, a sense of our future and it should provide some kind of comfort. It's not just entertainment for entertainment's sake, it's an investment.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.

I am deeply in tune with my heart and core, and it's made me a better writer, artist, and most of all woman. It's made me more myself.

Songwriting is like going to church. I'm connecting to something, and it's rewarding in really important ways. I don't need to share it with anyone to feel good about it.

I just didn't know where I fit in - I didn't seem to fit in my parent's generation. I didn't seem to fit in my own generation. Little by little, this took me into a spiritual search for understanding; a search for meaning and fulfillment.

Art is the path to being spiritual.

I'm inspired by throwing out any darkness that is inside of me. For me, art cures.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

The goal of art-making in general is communication.

I've learned that I'm most powerful when I'm doing my art.

To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.