Paul Auster

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn't think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

I'm not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me.

You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either.

With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can't get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch. It's an incredibly tedious process.

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don't know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don't know. I really don't know.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

In my studio, it is unkempt and unattractive. Once I'm in my work, I don't notice where I am.

I think New York has evolved in my work just the way the city has.

I'm living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.