Paul Auster Quotes

I tend to write from a personal place, and most of the time when I'm writing by myself, it's coming from something I've experienced.

When I write for myself, I think about myself and draw from my own experience.

The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.

If I was going to write something, I'd need to stop for three months and just see if I had any thoughts in there.

I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have.

The 'Glass' is not my autobiography, nor is it self-expression. Far from it.

It's a slow process rewriting your own life in your head. I think that's a writerly thing.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.

In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.

I write to find out what I think.

To keep a diary is to attempt a difficult literary form. Its effectiveness is likely to derive from a special blend of honesty and appetite for life that gives the power to record everyday happenings while magically freeing them from banality and triviality.

He wrote one more paragraph for his own sake, to see what he had to say.

Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.

He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.

I think at the age of 50, everyone should write their own autobiography.

As a blogger, Chez Pazienza is filled with outrage, passion and insight -- delivered with a distinctive point of view, a wicked sense of humor, and a two-fisted style of prose. In Dead Star Twilight, he turns all these on himself -- and produces a fierce, funny, disturbing, but ultimately uplifting memoir. This is the book A Million Little Pieces dreamed of being.

I'm still getting to the good part / the breaking down / learning how to write my story.

I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.