Paul Auster Quotes

I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment, yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me.

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off ... Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust.

It was a dagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.

Farewell, Father," she said. He fell back upon his chair, choking. She laughed, not with mirth or even mockery, but something that was closer to a sob. "You crafted me so sharp, I cut even myself.

My heart is heavy, she thought. It’s not just a saying. It is what is—heavy, a great stone lodged in my breast, pressing down my whole being. How can I even stand straight and look out upon the world? I am doubled over into myself and, for all the weight, find only emptiness.

I am...sad and angry. Why is my spirit so sad and angry? I look back at my life and all I can remember is rage and rage and rage.

When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears.

Men and women aren't really dogs: they only look like it and behave like it. Somewhere inside there is a great chagrin and a gnawing discontent.

I had nothing to fear from my father. Except his disappointment. Which was no small thing.

The silence is perfect, and yet a torment.

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,Reality's dark dream!I turn from you, and listen to the wind,Which long has raved unnoticed.

Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire, I was melted and burned, if now that it's extinguished outside me, it besets and consumes me inside, and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?

Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that's where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. Its breath is full of lies; it smells of spite.

How can you just leave me standing? Alone in a world that's so cold? (So cold) Maybe I'm just too demanding, Maybe I'm just like my father too bold.Maybe you're just like my mother She's never satisfied (She's never satisfied) Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doves cry.

A manifesto, a diary, a crumpled suicide note, and a still relevant love letter.

I don't need more pain in my life. Why did I invite it in? Do I have to feel pain to believe I feel anything at all?

A neurotic can neither enjoy his illusions nor give them up.

Deep within I'm shaken by the violence of existing for only you.

I feel very troubled in the head and heart.

Neurotic quarrels always have the same theme-song: Hate me and get it over with.

My parents were extremely reluctant. When my father was clearly dying, my mother refused to acknowledge it.

Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

As we try to change, we will discover within us a fierce struggle between our loyalty to that battle-scarred victim of his own childhood, our father, and the father we want to be. We must meet our childhood father at close range: get to know him, learn to forgive him, and somehow, go beyond him.

I often wish my mother had died so that at least I could get some people's sympathy. But there she was, a perfectly beautiful mother.