Paul Auster Quotes

When I was young, I'd fight everyone who insisted I'd be an actress. I'd say, 'No way. I'm going to be a veterinarian. I'm going to work at Wetzel's Pretzels.'

Books for teens are amazing and compelling, I think, because they're generally set in a time in people's lives when they are uncertain about who they are and who they love and what the right thing is to do.

When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.

Romantic relationships are the least interesting thing for me to write about. I'm 45, and that's not the most interesting thing in my life anymore.

'Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.

I don't really think about having a retrospective on my high-school years. It's not something that, from a positive or a negative standpoint, is a driving force in my life.

I think drugs are part of the magical possibilities of youth and I wouldn't be here if I had continued with it.

Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship.

The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face.

You're young and you're always in pursuit your young manhood. You're trying to figure out - what does that mean? What does - you know, there's a lot of pressure on young men to sort that out. And, you know, we tend to gravitate towards one-dimensional iconography as far as what it means to be a fully grown man. And you can get lost in so much of it out there.

When I was about 17 I knew that I was going to be serious about music. Before that I thought, fairly certainly, that I would be a writer. Before that, I thought I would be a forward in the NBA. And before that I thought that I would own a snake farm.

Don't confuse having a career with having a life.

If I was single and did not have kids, I wonder whether if I would try as hard to be patient, to mind how I react to situations. Not saying people who do not have children don't, but in my life and how I fight against doing the things that have positive impact in my life...I think I would find it easier not to practice the principles did I not have children.

For a long time I thought I knew for sure who I was. I grew up in New Orleans and became a comedian. And there was everything that came along with that. The nightclubs. The smoking. The drinking. Then I turned 13.

I do sometimes think I could have done without the drugs actually; that was a waste of time, and a huge risk. But then again, there's nothing I can change, so in a way regret is pointless.

I think writing about the time in Hermione’s life that I write about – growing from childhood into womanhood, literally, I think it brought back to me how very difficult it is.So much is expected of you as you become a woman, and often you are asked to sacrifice parts of you in becoming a girl, I would say. Hermione doesn’t.

Youth is the period of harsh judgments, and a man seldom learns until he reaches thirty that human nature is made up not of simples, but of compounds.

Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.

What do you have in mind after you graduate?" What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. "I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.

We dated in our early 20s, when we were working at the same newspaper. We broke up, got back together and broke up again. I wanted to get married and have kids, but he wasn't ready. So I married someone else, had my daughters and the marriage ended ... and there was Bill. He'd never gotten married and was finally, finally ready. We discovered that we were still each other's favorite people to talk to.

I know most people don't like to be around teenagers but I do. I'm one of the only people I can think of who can't wait for my kid to be a teenager. I think being a teenager is one of the most wonderful things in the world. I really enjoyed it - just this heightened emotional state where everything is beautiful and everything is new and you're convinced that you're really going to break the mould and be different from your parents. And the best part is that you have so much more time that you didn't have as a child.

Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes.

As the children get older and know what they want ... We all grew up at one point.

Books showed me that there were other ways to live a life.

I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.