Paul Auster Quotes

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.

He who understands humanity seeks solitude

It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls." "There are always walls." I say.

Anyway, solitary people interest me. There are so many different ways of being solitary.' 'I know just what you mean,' said X. 'I know exactly what you're going to say. Different kinds of solitude. Enforced solitude and voluntary solitude.' 'Quite,' said Viktoria. 'There's no need to go into it further. But when people understand one another without speaking, it can often leave them with very little to talk about, don't you think?

I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.

The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely.

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull. But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have? By the time you read this last page, that- if anywhere- is the only place I will be.

When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.

I like being alone and I think this movie, as much as it is an investigation of connection and people bonding, I also think it's just as much about loneliness.

I need, absolutely, to be alone.

I've spent so much of my life travelling alone, so I keep things to myself.

I am quite a private person.

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

There are times in my life when I just want to be by myself.

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

I really do work in solitude.