Paul Auster Quotes

I don't personally like the e-readers they've come up with so far. I don't fetishize books, but I do like that they're solid and unchanging.

I like to hold a book. When someone sends me a script, I ask for a hard copy or print one out.

I am still a lover of paper books. One of my first jobs was in a bookstore, and I still like to be able to write in a margin and feel the paper. Once inside of a digital device, I end up losing things.

I'm a firm believer in reading actual books.

I read actual books. It's cool to read on a Kindle if that's what you want to do, but for me, I like having a bookshelf.

There's something touching about a kid who's reading a book that's printed on actual paper. I think that anything that kids start reading, within reason, can lead to other discoveries.

...Something we once loved, and love now, in the shape of a book. Maybe eBooks are going to take over, one day, but not until those whizzkids in Silicon Valley invent a way to bend the corners, fold the spine, yellow the pages, add a coffee ring or two and allow the plastic tablet to fall open at a favorite page.

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.

Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness - a little bit of humanity.

I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts.

I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.

We still have books because they are so brilliantly suited to the way human beings absorb information and at their best, they are among the most beautiful things we have.

You don't always have to have an e-book. You can have a real book. I'd like to see the old way maintain.

This object that we hold in our hands, a book... that tactile pleasure, it's just not going to go away.

There's been a fragmentation of how the market functions, but I believe printed books are here to stay. People like the tactile experience, the smell of them; there's a great romance to them.

I know I'm old-fashioned, but there's just something about the act of looking at books versus taking in information on a screen, which is so one-dimensional. There's a sense of ownership that you have with books, a physical connection.

I still buy actual books. The smell, having it in your hands - there's really no substitute.

I read real books. On paper. You know, those printed books? I feel like this is the last thing I do to support my industry. I think they smell great, too.

When I write, I'm still imagining a kid reading it on paper. I read e-books when I travel, but in general I still prefer holding an old-fashioned book in my hands. There's a special, tactile experience.

I don't have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage.

I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association. Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.

I would always want printed books.

I don't want to read a book on a device. I like a book with a hard cover and text on a piece of paper. I like magazines. I don't care if I carry around 100 lbs. of magazines; I'd rather do that than look at them on the Internet.

But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

(in response to the question: what do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?) Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.