Paul Auster Quotes

Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.

Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.

I'm living my future as long as you're living in the present and realize how beautiful life is.

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

Living in the moment, thinking about the future, and staying connected to the past: That's what makes me feel whole.

Happy is the person who knows what to remember of the past, what to enjoy in the present, and what to plan for in the future.

The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.

Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards.

Remember the past, live the present, think a little less about the future.

I'm a historian. I really like the past. But most people seem far more interested in what you can tell them about the future.

Whenever we're having a great time, we're already anticipating the day when we will remember this great time. Many of us live in that unreal area between the past, the present, and the future.

The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

I'm looking forward to the future, and feeling grateful for the past.

I have wondered about time all my life.

No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.

Learn from the past, look to the future, but live in the present.

History provides an antidote to cynicism about the past.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.