Paul Auster Quotes

I just feel like there's a better mind-to-pen connection for me than a mind-to-keyboard connection.

I always write my first draft in longhand, in lined notebooks. I move around the house, sitting where I like, and watch the words spool out in front of me, actually taking a lot of pleasure in the way they look in my strange handwriting on the page.

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

I write by hand and then transfer the text onto the computer. I like the process of actually having a pen in my hand. Things flow more easily for me that way.

I write by ear. I tried writing with the typewriter, but I found it too unwieldy

I can't imagine what it would be like to write in a relaxed state. I'm going to be writing some stories for my own interest. I want to experiment with different things and see if I can approach writing with much less control and in a better psychological state. It will be like breaking out of a straitjacket.

Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.

I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on screen.

A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.

I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between me and the paper.

I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand.

You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that.

I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type.

My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.

I never feel more myself than when I'm writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.

It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years.

I don't write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.

I paint very messy. I throw paint around. So when I let myself do the same sort of thing with my writing, and I would just write and write and write and revise, that's when I found my rhythm in writing.

I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide.

I write everything with fountain pens. I don't know why. I've done it since I was bar mitzvahed. I was given a fountain pen, a Parker fountain pen, and I loved it, and I've never liked writing anything with pencils or ball-points.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.