The Book of Illusions Quotes

“We all want to believe in impossible things, I suppose, to persuade ourselves that miracles can happen.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“I was perfectly calm and perfectly insane, perfectly prepared to accept what the moment had offered. Indifference of that magnitude is rare and because it can be achieved only by someone ready to let go of who he is, it demands respect. It inspires awe in those who gaze upon it.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“The only person I knew how to be with now was myself - but I wasn´t really anyone, and I wasn´t really alive. I was just someone who pretended to be alive, a dead mean who spent his days translating a dead man´s book.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“He knew that his wings could ignite at any moment, but the closer he came to touching the fire, the more he sensed that he was fulfilling his destiny. As he put it in his journal that night: If I mean to save my life, then I have to come within an inch of destroying it.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“The world was full of holes, tiny apertures of meaninglessness, microscopic rifts that the mind could walk through, and once you were on the other side of one of those holes, you were free of yourself, free of your life free of your death, free of everything that belonged to you.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“What else we know?
Nothing. That´s why we´re sitting together in this car now. Because we´re the same, and because we don´t know a damn thing other than that.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“I was in the book, and the book was in my head, and as long as I stayed inside my head, I could go on writing the book. It was like living in a padded cell, but of all the lives I could have lived at that moment, it was the only one that made sense to me. I wasn't capable of being in the world, and I knew that if I tried to go back into it before I was ready, I would be crushed.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“When every card in the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win a hand is to break the rules.
You beg, borrow, and steal, as the old adage goes, and if you happen to get caught in the act, at least you´ve gone down fighting the good fight.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“Imagine knowing that you're good at something, so good that the world would be in awe of you if they could see your work, and then keeping yourself a secret from the world.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“There was nothing to see, nothing to distract me from succumbing to my fears, and the longer I kept my eyes shut, the more terribly I saw my fears wanted me to see.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“To think one thought meant thinking the opposite thought, and no sooner did
that second thought destroy the first thought than a third thought rose up to
destroy the second.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“He learned how to look at himself from a distance, to see himself first of all as a man among other men, then as a collection of random particles of matter, and finally as a single speck of dust—and the farther he traveled from his point of origin, she said, the closer he came to achieving greatness.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“I wasn't able to think about them directly or summon them up in any conscious way, but as I put together their puzzles and played with their Lego pieces, building evermore complex and baroque structures, I felt that I was temporarily inhabiting them again--carrying on their little phantom lives for them by repeating the gestures they had made when they still had bodies.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“Les moments de crise produsent un redoublement de vie chez les hommes.
Moments of crisis produce a redoubled vitality in men. Or, more succinctly perhaps: Men don't begin to live fully until thier backs are against the wall.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“A lot of film people are like that– especially the ones below the line, the blue-collar guys, the grunts. They like putting their hands on the equipment and getting it to do things for them. It's not about art or ideas. It's about working at something and making it come out right.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“It was one of the most sublimely exhilarating moments of my life. I was half a step in front of the real, an inch or two beyond the confines of my body, and when the thing happened just as I thought it would, I felt my skin had become transparent. I wasn't occupying space anymore so much as melting into it. What was around me was also inside me, and I had only to look into myself in order to see the world.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“هناك أفكار تحطم العقل،أفكار من القوة والقبح،بحيث إنها تخربك حالما تبدأ بالتفكير فيها.لقد كنت أخاف مما أعلم،خفت السقوط في رعب ما أعلم،ولذلك لم أجسد الفكر بالكلمات إلى أن فات الأوان على الكلمات لكي تفيدني.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“إن لحظات الأزمة تولد حيوية مضاعفة في الرجال.أو،ربما بمزيد من الإيجاز:إن الرجال لا يبدؤون بالعيش بامتلاء إلا بعد أن ترتطم ظهورهم بالجدار.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“لقد اكتشف أن الحياة حلم محموم،وأن الواقع عالم بلا أساس من التلفيق والهلوسة،مكان يتحقق فيه كل ما يمكن أن تتخيل.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“إنني الآن لا أخاطب إلا الموتى.إنهم الوحيدون الذين أثق فيهم،والوحيدون الذين يفهمونني.وأنا مثلهم،أعيش بلا مستقبل.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“لم أشعر مرة بأني ضائع كحالي الآن،ولم أكن مرة بمثل ما أنا عليه من وحدة وخوف-ولكن، لم أكن مرة بمثل هذه الحيوية.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“إن الشعور بالذنب يمكن أن يدفع بالإنسان إلى التصرف ضد أفضل مصالحه،ولكن الشهوة أيضا يمكنها أن تفعل الشيء نفسه،وعندما يمتزج الشعور بالذنب مع الشهوة بقدر متساو في قلب الإنسان،فإنه يقوم بأفعال غريبة.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“كانت واحدة من أشد لحظات حياتي إثارة بسمو.كنت على بعد أقل من خطوة من الشيء الحقيقي،وبوصة أو اثنتين خارج حدود جسدي،وعندما حدث الأمر كما تخيلت أنه سيقع،شعرت وكأن جلدي أصبح شفافا.لم أعد أحتل مساحة،بل أذوب فيها.وما كان يدور من حولي كان أيضا يحدث داخلي،وكان يكفي أن أنظر داخلي،لكي أرى العالم.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“هناك أكثر مما ينبغي من الأمل،وأكثر مما ينبغي من خيبة الأمل.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“المهم ليس كيف تحسن تجنب المشاكل،بل كيف تحسن التعامل مع المشاكل عندما تأتي.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“وبعد لحظة،انتابتني الشكوك،وفي اللحظة التي تلتها بدأت أشك في تلك الشكوك،إن تقليب فكرة ما في الرأس يعني التفكير في الفكرة المناقضة،وما إن تدمر تلك الفكرة الثانية الفكرة الأولى حتى تبرز فكرة ثالثة لكي تدمر الثانية.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“Bőröm az illanó érzetek palimpszesztje lett, és minden réteg annak a nyomát viselte, aki voltam.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“The Memoirs became the most celebrated unfinished, unpublished, unread book in history. But Chateaubriand was still broke. So Madame Récamier came up with a new scheme, and this one worked - or sort of worked. A stock company was formed, and people bought shares in the manuscript. Word futures, I guess you could call them, in the same way that people from Wall Street gamble on the price of soybeans and corn. In effect, Chateaubriand mortgaged his autobiography to finance his old age. They gave him a nice chunk of money up front, which allowed him to pay off his creditors, and a guaranteed annuity for the rest of his life. It was a brilliant arrangement. The only problem was that Chateaubriand kept on living.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“..ta strogi intelektualni trening ga je postopoma spremenil v drugačnega človeka. Naučil se je kako naj od daleč gleda nase, a se vidi najprej kot človek med drugimi ljudmi, potem kot zbirko naključnih delcov in nazadnje kot prašno zrnce- in bolj ko se je oddaljeval od tam kjer je začel,... bližje je prihajal temu, da postane velik.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions