Paul Auster Quotes

I'm all for typewriters, with instant carbon copies, and seeing films in cinemas.

I write on the typewriter. I like it because I like the feeling of making something with my hands. I like pressing the key and a letter comes up and is printed on a piece of paper. I can understand that.

To give you an idea about how old I'm getting, we had some family living in Texas for a while, and we went to the Texas museum at the University of Texas in Austin, and they had this whole Texas Instruments section, and my Speak & Spell was an exhibit in the museum.

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it.

I didn't know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

It's sad that the cell phone is replacing the watch as a time-telling device. I wear a vintage watch that's really skinny.

I remember my father banging away on an IBM Selectric in the garage. He wrote his first novels on that machine. I remember its pebbly surface, its cold heft. It made its mark, literally and violently.

You can do without a woman but not a typewriter.

Generations of thinkers have made typewriters their frenemies, and long before there were Gmail inboxes, print correspondence stacked up, some hastily written and impulsive on the steel gadgets.

WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.

I never had a typewriter. I never had any machines.

I'm not a computer guy. I have my Smith Corona. I would know nothing about computers.

I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot - we inhale from our 'Bartlett's.'

And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?

To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about.

I remember going to the wardrobe-fitting for the first time and seeing all the cool high-waisted jeans and halter-tops - and that style is coming back anyway - so I loved that!

I use a computer, but before I begin each new book I keep a notebook. I write down everything that comes to mind during that period before I actually begin. It might take months or weeks. That notebook is my security blanket so that I never have to face a blank screen (or blank page). But I print out often and my best ideas usually come with a pencil in my hand.

I write a lot about the past because I really see things clearly in hindsight.

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you're gone and there's no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

It's not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there's a pretty good chance you'd call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then.

I'm not a tweeter or a Facebooker or a Grammer. I'm a real grump when it comes to technology. I'm like, come on, just write me a letter.

I wasn't wattching television when I was a youngster; there was the radio.