Paul Auster Quotes

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.

And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other?

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself.

"Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?" The Imass shrugged before replying. "I think of futility, Adjunct." "Do all Imass think about futility?" "No. Few think at all." "Why is that?" The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. "Because, Adjunct, it is futile."

We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.

Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents

An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident.

As much as we'd like to think life is sacred, there's not a lot of evidence for that. The universe is maddeningly casual, giving and taking it.

Why does anything ever happen? Some things happen and some don't.

I never feel like there's any one point to the film, to anything, to any of the movies I've made.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

But the world itself has no reason, and I can say so, I who have experienced it all, from the creation to the destruction.

One joins the movement in a valueless world, Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.

Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.

Maybe Life is random. No fate. No God. Just Time.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.