Paul Auster Quotes

Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.

It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

If you cut a painter's hands off, he'd still feel the urge to pick up a brush.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.

I don't write these stories for the rewards that come back to me. I write them because I have to write them. It's a sickness on some level. It's a compulsion.

I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there

You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.

No one begs you to be a poet or write a 1000-page poem. You have to be fueled by a drive, a conviction - a need, a necessity, a vision that is so pressing that it has no other outlet but through you. That doesn't mean that you are unconscious or in trance, but there can be moments like that.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do - if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn't feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.

This desire [to write] is rather strange all the same and is not without a certain "cracked" quality.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

My compulsion is to create things.

I felt impelled to write. It felt demonic, and I wanted to improve, the way some people habitually pick up a guitar and get better at playing it and making up songs.

I make music and I can't stop. It's a compulsion and an obsession and a curse.

I'm addicted to creating and writing.

But I really believe that you don't do music because you want to, you do it because you have to.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.

I'm not happy unless I have a pen in my hand, it's really that simple.

I never, ever decided that I had to write a novel because, to me, there's no such decision that ought to be made. It's only something that I felt compelled to do, and it began to evolve.

You don't decide to paint. It's like getting hungry and going to the kitchen to eat. It's a need, not a choice.

When a real artist creates something, it has to be a necessity, the only way he can say something.