Paul Auster Quotes

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

I wouldn't recommend being a musician to anyone. It's not glamorous. It's a lot of being dirty, not eating, playing for five people and one of them is the bartender.

What a beautiful art, but what a wretched profession.

I still think of that guy I was without a wife or kids, and I still want to entertain that guy. The lonely guy, the frustrated guy, the guy with no money - this is the guy who needs to laugh.

There was a long time where I was an 'artist' in quotes, who had no money. But I guess back then I also never had a girlfriend.

I wish my deadly foe no worse Than want of friends, and empty purse.

Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.

You don't need to come from poverty to say growing up is tough. You can have everything in the world going for you and still feel the same loneliness and the same problems that a lot of kids have.

Nobody wants to sit where I'm sitting and say, 'Hey, this is the reality. I did two movies, six guest-star spots and I starred in a one-woman show, and I'm not making any money. I'm on TV every day in every country in the world, and I don't make any money.'

I write mostly in my office in the shed outside at home, but it can get very cold. I write best on the train, among people. As a writer you spend so much time away from people.

It's a dismally lonely business, writing.

Loneliness is the ultimate poverty.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

I went to college a little bit, and that didn't work out, and I didn't finish. So, I would play in bars until I ran out of money, and then I'd get a real job.

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

I know writers, and they seem to be the most disgruntled part of the art world.

With all the awards I've won, you'd think that I'd at least be able to make a living. It's a really terrible situation.

I had no money to buy clothes, and people would run away when I walked down the street. It was a right laugh.

Tough times were when I didn't have a job and nobody called me.

Sometimes, a writer's life alone can tell a story.

Yves Saint Laurent didn't have friends. He loved nobody. He was intimate with nobody.

I knew what it was to be poor... my mother worried about putting food on the table. I knew what it was to feel excluded and shut out, but I also knew what it was to experience love and generosity.