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Novels Are Fictions And Therefore They Tell Lies, But Through Those Lies Every Novelist Attempts To Tell The Truth About The World.
-Paul Auster
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Novels Are Fictions And

Paul Auster
...
Novels Are Fictions And Therefore They Tell Lies, But Through Those Lies Every Novelist Attempts To Tell The Truth About The World.

Understanding the Quote: "novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies..."

This quote by Paul Auster reflects deeply on the theme of lying. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Lying, Novelists, Fiction, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Paul Auster interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Paul Auster

Paul Auster is celebrated for insightful thoughts on lying and novelists. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 40640
Topic
Lying
Novelists
Fiction
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All Through My Writing Life I've Had This Impulse To Write Autobiographical Works.
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[lev] Tolstoy Is Not A Boy-writer. He's A Grown-up. And [fedor] Doestoeivski Is Not A Boy-writer.
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This Was The First Time He Had Seriously Confronted What He Was Doing, And The Force Of That Awareness Came Very Abruptly - With A Surging Of His Pulse And A Frantic Pounding In His Head. He Was About To Gamble His Life On That Table, And The Insanity Of That Risk Filled Him With A Kind Of Awe.
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When I Am Writing, Even Though It's Hard And I Do Struggle Often, I Am Happier Than When I'm Not Writing. I Feel Alive. Whereas When I'm Not Writing, I Feel Like Your Common Every-day Neurotic.
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When You're Young, You Keep Reading New Writers And You Keep Changing Your Mind About How You Ought To Sound.
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Escaping Into A Film Is Not Like Escaping Into A Book. Books Force You To Give Something Back To Them, To Exercise Your Intelligence And Imagination, Where As You Can Watch A Film-and Even Enjoy It-in A State Of Mindless Passivity.
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All My Novels Are Very Much Directly Related To My Inner Life, Even Though I'm Inventing Characters, Even Though It's Fiction, Even Though It's Make-believe, It Nevertheless Is Coming Out Of The Deepest Recesses Of Myself.
Believe
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But Lost Chances Are As Much A Part Of Life As Chances Taken, And A Story Cannot Dwell On What Might Have Been.
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The Joke Is The Purest, Most Essential Form Of Storytelling. Every Word Has To Count.
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A Canteen I Remember Vividly, And Maybe One Other Thing, I Can't Remember. And I Knew Then That He Had Bought Them In An Army Surplus Store That Day And He Wanted To Maybe Enhance Himself In My Eyes, And Say, "well, Yes, I Have Been In The Army." Or [he] Simply Just Didn't Want To Disappoint Me. It Could Have Been One Or The Other. But I Knew That He Had Lied To Me. And This Filled Me With A Tremendous Sort Of Anger Towards Him. At The Same Time, Knowing He Was Trying To Please Me, So Feeling Good About Him.
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I've Found That Writing Novels Is An All-absorbing Experience - Both Physical And Mental - And I Have To Do It Every Day In Order To Keep The Rhythm, To Keep Myself Focused On What I'm Doing.
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When I Think Of Tokyo Story, Yeah, It Is Like A Novella. That Doesn't Mean It's Not Great. Some Of My Favorite Tolstoy Works Are His Novellas.
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I Think The Act Of Talking About Something - With A Friend, Or Someone In Your Family, Or Someone You Care About, And You're Discussing Something That You Both Admire - Can Often Sharpen Your Thoughts About What You've Read Or Seen And Help You Think More Clearly About It.
Thinking
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I Still Believe We Wasted A Golden Opportunity To Make Significant Changes In Our Country. I Think People In America Would Have Been Ready And Willing To Do It, But The Bush Administration Took A Kind Of Simplistic, Almost Moronic Approach To It, All Because People Were So Afraid.
Country
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One Should Never Underestimate The Power Of Books.
Book
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When Young People Say I Want To Be A Novelist, I'd Say, Think Very Carefully About It. There Will Be Very Few Rewards, You Probably Won't Make Any Money, You Probably Won't Become Famous, And You Will Spend Your Whole Life Locked Up In A Room By Yourself Worrying About How To Survive.
Thinking
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Worry
You Have To Really Have A Taste For Being Alone To Be A Writer.
I Think Most Writers Can't Really Think About Their Work Without A Kind Of Revulsion. And I Think That's Probably Why We Keep Going Back And Trying Again, Trying To Do Better Each Time.
Thinking
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Dismantling The Architecture Of My Discontent
Architecture
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The World Is So Unpredictable. Things Happen Suddenly, Unexpectedly. We Want To Feel We Are In Control Of Our Own Existence. In Some Ways We Are, In Some Ways We're Not. We Are Ruled By The Forces Of Chance And Coincidence.
Unpredictable Things
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Often It's True That Films Just Go Right Through Us. You See The Film, You Might Be Entertained, And If It's Not A Great Film, It Loses Its Power Very Quickly. I Think Even Simply Acceptable Books Stay With Us A Lot Longer.
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We Exist For Ourselves, Perhaps, And At Times We Even Have A Glimmer Of Who We Are, But In The End We Can Never Be Sure, And As Our Lives Go On, We Become More And More Opaque To Ourselves, More And More Aware Of Our Own Incoherence. No One Can Cross The Boundary Into Another – For The Simple Reason That No One Can Gain Access To Himself.
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The Most Challenging Project I've Ever Done, I Think, Is Every Single Thing I've Ever Tried To Do. It's Never Easy.
Thinking
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Just Think It, And Chances Are It Will Happen.
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I Don't Even Own A Computer. I Write By Hand Then I Type It Up On An Old Manual Typewriter. But I Cross Out A Lot - I'm Not Writing In Stone Tablets, It's Just Ink On Paper. I Don't Feel Comfortable Without A Pen Or A Pencil In My Hand. I Can't Think With My Fingers On The Keyboard. Words Are Generated For Me By Gripping The Pen, And Pressing The Point On The Paper.
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Thinking
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Money Is The Driving Force Of Hand To Mouth, The Lack Of Money, And All Those True Stories About Strange Things In The Red Notebook, Coincidences And Unlikely Events, Surprise, The Unexpected.
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Our Lives Don't Really Belong To Us, You See -- They Belong To The World, And In Spite Of Our Efforts To Make Sense Of It, The World Is A Place Beyond Our Understanding.
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I Haven't Done Any Translating For Decades Now. It's Something I Did When I Was Young.
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As A Poet Or A Novelist Or A Painter, You Are Pushing Yourself All The Time, Always Looking For A New Way To Approach Something, Challenging Yourself And Never, Never Trying To Write The Same Book Twice.
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You Can't Ever Approach A Book As A Complete Virgin, Certainly Not If You're A Critic. There Is A Lot Of Bad Faith Out There. That's Why I Finally Trained Myself Not To Look At This Stuff Anymore, Because It Doesn't Do Me Any Good To See Myself Either Praised Or Attacked.
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Bodies Count, Of Course - They Count More Than We're Willing To Admit - But We Don't Fall In Love With Bodies, We Fall In Love With Each Other. We All Know That, But The Moment We Go Beyond A Catalogue Of Surface Qualities And Appearances, Words Begin To Fail Us, To Crumble Apart In Mystical Confusions And Cloudy, Unsubstantial Metaphors.
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Writing Begins In The Body, It Is The Music Of The Body, And Even If The Words Have Meaning, Can Sometimes Have Meaning, The Music Of The Words Is Where The Meanings Begin....writing As A Lesser Form Of Dance.
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Brooklyn Has A Bit Of Everything - Some Of The Most Beautiful Things In America, And Some Of The Most Wretched, Ugly, Impoverished Things.
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I Had Jumped Off The Edge, And Then, At The Very Last Moment, Something Reached Out And Caught Me In Midair. That Something Is What I Define As Love. It Is The One Thing That Can Stop A Man From Falling, Powerful Enough To Negate The Laws Of Gravity.
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To Tell You The Truth, I'm Not Unhappy About It. I'm Not Even Sure That I Like The Idea Of Adapting Novels Into Films. It's Very Difficult To Do, And It Usually Doesn't Work. There Are Exceptions, But Generally Speaking, One Feels Disappointed With The Result.
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Novels Are Fictions And Therefore They Tell Lies, But Through Those Lies Every Novelist Attempts To Tell The Truth About The World.
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In Fact, Writing, Especially Writing Autobiographical Works, And This Is Actually The Fourth Time I've Done It, Each Time I've Done It I've Felt Deeply Immersed In The Material As I'm Doing It, And Then It's Over And Everything Is The Same.
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Even When I'm Just Sitting At My Desk, I Have To Get Up Every Twenty Minutes Or So And Walk Around, Walk Around, Walk Around, And Then I Can Go Back To The Page. I Can't Just Sit There For Hours At A Time. Language Comes Out Of The Body As Much As The Mind.
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Writing Is, After All, A Gesture Towards Other People, Giving Something To Others. And So It's Not A Completely Hermetic Exercise. It's Really An Opening Up.
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Don't Be A Writer, It's A Terrible Way To Live Your Life, There's Nothing To Be Gained From It But Poverty And Obscurity And Solitude. So If You Have A Taste For All Those Things, Which Means That You Really Are Burning To Do It, Then Go Ahead And Do It.
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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.
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Winning
Hands
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.
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As My Friend George Oppen Once Said To Me About Getting Old: What A Strange Thing To Happen To A Little Boy.
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It's Extremely Difficult To Get These Jobs Because You Can't Get A Job On A Ship Unless You Have Seaman's Paper's, And You Can't Get Seaman's Papers Unless You Have A Job On A Ship. There Had To Be A Way To Break Through The Circle, And He Was The One Who Arranged It For Me.
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He Would Conclude That Nothing Was Real Except Chance.
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When I Write, The Story Is Always Uppermost In My Mind, And I Feel That Everything Must Be Sacrificed To It. All Elegant Passages, All The Curious Details, All The So-called Beautiful Writing - If They Are Not Truly Relevant To What I Am Trying To Say, Then They Have To Go.
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Each Man, Therefore, Is The Entire World, Bearing Within His Genes A Memory Of All Mankind. Or As Leibniz Put It: ‘every Living Substance Is A Perpetual Living Mirror Of The Universe’
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We Are Continually Shaped By The Forces Of Coincidence.
Coincidence
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Paintings. Or The Collapse Of Time In Images.
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What Used To Keep Me Up At Night Was The Fact That I Didn't Know How I Was Going To Pay The Rent. Now That I Can Pay The Rent, I'm Worrying About People I Care About, You Know, The People I Love. The Little Aches And Pains Of My Children That I, My Family. That's Always First.
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I Guess The Toughest Things In Translations Are Word Play, Which Can Never Be Reproduced Exactly.
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I'm Not A Boy-writer, I've Never Been. I Wanted To Be A Boy-writer When I Was Young, And I Think That Held Me Back. I Wanted To Be Very Clever, And Funny, But I'm Not Very Clever And Not Terribly Funny. I've Finally Accepted My Limits, And I Do What I Can Do.
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Thinking
It Became A Habit Of Mine Never To Leave The House Without A Pencil In My Pocket.
House
Pockets
Habit
There Is A Line From The Marina Tsvetaeva Poem I'm So Fond Of: "in This Most Christian Of Worlds/ All Poets Are Jews." What She Means Is That Writers And Artists Are Outside The Normal Flow Of Daily Life, The Normal Flow Of Society In General.
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Mean
Artist
I Was Born Just After The End Of World War Ii, And With My Friends In Our Little Suburban Backyards In New Jersey, We Used To Play War A Lot. I Don't Know If Boys Still Play War, They Probably Do, But We Were Thrusting Ourselves Into Recent History And We Were Always Fighting Either The Nazis Or The Japanese.
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I See Myself As Anybody, As Everybody; I'm Not Just Telling The Story Of My Life To Give The Reader A Picture Of Who I Am.
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I Don't Think About The Stories So Much, As The Characters Themselves. They Live On, And They Are Almost As Real As I Am.
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Thinking
When A Person Is Lucky Enough To Live Inside A Story, To Live Inside An Imaginary World, The Pains Of This World Disappear. For As Long As The Story Goes On, Reality No Longer Exists.
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Reality
In My Books, There Are A Lot Of People Stuck In Rooms. Or, Conversely, Out In The Wide Open. It Seems That, In A Funny Way, When People Are Cooped Up In Rooms They Are Freer Than When They Are Wandering About In The World.
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People
World
Everything Can Change At Any Moment, Suddenly And Forever.
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Forever
Moments
I Don't Like That Word [memoir]. Whenever My Publishers Have Wanted To Use It, I've Told Them To Take It Away.
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Memoir
Wanted
I Don't Have All The Facts. And I Might Misremember. As A Matter Of Fact, After I Finished Winter Journal, I Realized That I'd Gotten Someone's Name Wrong.
Winter
Names
Might
Reading Was My Escape And My Comfort, My Consolation, My Stimulant Of Choice: Reading For The Pure Pleasure Of It, For The Beautiful Stillness That Surrounds You When You Hear An Author's Words Reverberating In Your Head.
Beautiful
Reading
Choices
I Would Say That Edgar Allan Poe, [georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, And [jorge Luis] Borges Are All Boy-writers. These Are Writers Who Take... A Kind Of Demonic Joy In Writing.
Writing
Boys
Joy
I Have To Say In Premise 'winter Journal' Is Really Not A Memoir. And I Don't Even Think Of It As An Autobiography. I Think Of It As A Literary Composition - Similar To Music - Composed Of Autobiographical Fragments. I'm Really Not Telling The Story Of My Life In A Coherent Narrative Form.
Winter
Thinking
Stories
...once You Fell In Love With Her, You Loved Her Until The Day You Died.
Died
What Better Portrait Of A Writer Than To Show A Man Who Has Been Bewitched By Books?
Book
Men
Portraits
I Know The Pleasure You Get From Making Your Films. The Intense Involvement In Every Aspect: The Acting, The Camera, The Colors, The Costumes, Even The Hair And Makeup. Editing Is Thrilling. Everything To Do With Films Is Absorbing - Everything But The Money Part, The Business. But I'm Deeply Glad I've Had That Experience.
Makeup
Acting
Film
What Matters Is Not How Well You Can Avoid Trouble, But How You Cope With Trouble When It Comes.
What Matters
Matter
Trouble
I've Written Books That Have Taken Me Fifteen Years, From First Sentence To Last, And Some That Only Take Three Or Four Months.
Book
Taken
Years
I Started Out In Life As A Poet, I Was Only Writing Poetry All Through My 20s, It Wasn't Until I Was About 30 That I Got Serious About Writing Prose. While I Was Writing Poems, I Would Often Divert Myself By Reading Detective Novels, I Liked Them.
Reading
Writing
Detectives
I Wrote Report From The Interior Was That After I Finished Winter Journal, I Took A Pause, And I Realized There Was More I Wanted To Say.
Winter
Wanted
I Realized
Once You Finish A Book, It Doesn't Belong To You Anymore. You're Giving It To Other People. If Something In What A Writer Writes Can Excite The Imagination And The Feelings Of The Reader, Then That Reader Carries It Around Forever. Nothing Is More Vivid Than Good Fiction.
Book
Writing
People
Every Man Is The Author Of His Own Life.
Men
Every Man
There's Hope For Everyone. That's What Makes The World Go Round.
Reality
World
Plaits
It's A Rare Day When She Speaks In Anything But Platitudes--all Those Exhausted Phrases And Hand-me-down Ideas That Cram The Dump Sites Of Contemporary Wisdom
Life
Hands
Ideas
I Write The Paragraph, Then I'm Crossing Out, Changing Words, Trying To Improve It. When It Seems More Or Less Ok, Then I Type It Up Because Sometimes It's Almost Illegible, And If I Wait, I Might Not Be Able To Read It The Next Day.
Writing
Next Day
Waiting
You're Too Good For This World, And Because Of That The World Will Eventually Crush You.
Crush
World
This World
When I Start, I Have A Feeling For The Characters, And Maybe The Shape Of The Story. Sometimes I Might Even Have The Last Sentence In Mind. But, No Book I've Ever Written Has Ever Ended The Way I Thought It Would. Characters Disappear, Others Come Forward. Once You Start Writing, Everything Changes.
Book
Writing
Character
I Had Made An Empirical Discovery And It Carried All The Weight Of A Mathematical Proof.
Science
Discovery
Weight
The Funny Thing Is That I Feel Close To All My Characters. Deep, Deep Inside Them All. I Can't Describe How Deeply I Love Them All.
Character
Funny Things
Feels
Writing Has Always Had A Tactile Quality For Me. It's A Physical Experience.
Writing
Quality
Tactile
The Tone Of Every Book Is Slightly Different; There's A Music That Each Has That Is Distinct From All The Others.
Book
Different
Tone
Wounds Are An Essential Part Of Life, And Until You Are Wounded In Some Way, You Cannot Become A Man.
Men
Essentials
Way
In Invisible There's A Lot About Childhood, The Death Of The Brother And Then The Relationship Between The Brother And Sister.
Brother
Childhood
Brothers And Sisters
I Was Always Very Curious As A Young Man About Why Older Writers Who I Met Seemed So Indifferent To What Was Going On, Whereas I, In My 20s, Was Reading Everything. Everything Seemed Important. But They Were Only Interested In The Writers They Admired When They Were Young, And I Didn't Understand It Then, But Now, Now I Understand It.
Reading
Men
Important
We Are All Aliens To Ourselves, And If We Have Any Sense Of Who We Are, It Is Only Because We Live Inside The Eyes Of Others.
Eye
Who We Are
Aliens
Things Have Not Changed As Much As We Would Like To Think They Have. Or Maybe We're Just In Another One Of The Divided Moments In The Country. The Late '60s Certainly Was One Of Them, The Civil War Being Another, But I'm Hard-pressed To Think Of Too Many.
Country
War
Thinking
It's Beyond The Grasp Of Anyone's Memory To Recall Conversations In Kind Of [memoir] Detail. So It's Fake. It's All Made Up.
Memories
Fake
Details
People Say You Have To Travel To See The World. Sometimes I Think That If You Just Stay In One Place And Keep Your Eyes Open, You're Going To See Just About All That You Can Handle.
Eye
Thinking
People
I Walk Around The World Like A Ghost, And Sometimes I Question Whether I Even Exist. Whether I've Ever Existed At All.
World
Ghost
Sometimes
Most Of The Boys Would Come With Bits Of Equipment That Their Fathers Had Given Them From Their War Days - Helmets, Canteens, Binoculars, These Kinds Of Things - That Leant A Kind Of Authenticity To The Games We Were Playing. But, Of Course, My Father Never Gave Me Anything. So I Began To Question Him. You Know, Why Don't You Have Anything From The War? And I Think He Was...embarrassed To Tell Me He Hadn't Fought, Because, You Know, Little Boys Want To Turn Their Fathers Into Heroes, And He Didn't Want To Be Diminished In My Eyes.
Father
War
Hero
At That Point, Noriko Finally Breaks Down And Begins To Cry Sobbing Into Her Hands As The Floodgates Open - This Young Woman Who Has Suffered In Silence For So Long, This Good Woman Who Refuse To Believe She's Good, For Only The Good Doubt Their Own Goodness, Which Is What Makes Them Good In The First Place. The Bad Know They Are Good, But The Good Know Nothing. They Spend Their Lives Forgiving Others, But They Can't Forgive Themselves.
Believe
Hands
Long
Most People Are Participating In The Grand Adventure Of Living With One Another.
Adventure
People
Participating
We Find Ourselves Only By Looking To What We’re Not.
It Often Happens That Things Are Other Than What They Seem, And You Can Get Yourself Into Trouble By Jumping To Conclusions.
Jumping
Trouble
Conclusion
We Construct A Narrative For Ourselves, And That's The Thread That We Follow From One Day To The Next. People Who Disintegrate As Personalities Are The Ones Who Lose That Thread.
Reality
People
Personality
I Thought, "well, I'm Writing About Early Childhood, So Maybe It Would Make Sense To Write About Late Childhood As Well, Early Adulthood." Those Were My Thoughts, And This Was How This Crazy Book [winter Journal] Was Composed. I've Never Seen A Book With Pictures Like At The End, Pictures Related To Things You've Read Before.
Crazy
Book
Writing
The Best Filmmakers, I Think, Have Always Had Very Narrow Frameworks For Their Stories, And Then They Can Go Deeply, Rather Than Skimming The Surface.
Thinking
Stories
Skimming
I Have Difficulty Orienting Myself In Space, And I'm Probably One Of The Few People Who Gets Lost In Manhattan.
Space
People
Manhattan
I Don't Read Reviews Any More, But I'm Told By My Publisher Who Gives Me An Account Of What People Have Been Writing And It's Been A Very Split Kind Of Response.
Writing
People
Giving
To Feel Estranged From Language Is To Lose Your Own Body.
Body
Language
Feels
There's Love, And Certainly Children You Care About More Than Yourself. But Nevertheless, We're Alone In Our Heads.
Children
Care
Nevertheless
I Feel I'm Discovering Something New, A Different Rhythm, And I Guess These Rhythms Have A Lot To Do With Walking, Too, But It's A Longer Trajectory Now. I'm Traveling Greater Distances With Each Sentence. But I Don't Write About Walking That Much Anymore.
Distance
Writing
Different
Stories Only Happen To Those Who Are Able To Tell Them.
Stories
Able
Happens
As Siri Says, Who Is Deeply Involved With Neuroscience, Emotion Consolidates Memory, And I Think That's True.
Memories
Thinking
Emotion
I Am Very Scared At The Beginning Of Each Book, Because I've Never Written It Before. I Feel I Have To Teach Myself How To Do It.
Book
Scared
Teach
The Truth Of The Story Lies In The Details.
Lying
Details
Stories
In General, Lives Seem To Veer Abruptly From One Thing To Another, To Jostle And Bump, To Squirm. A Person Heads In One Direction, Turns Sharply In Mid-course, Stalls, Drifts, Starts Up Again. Nothing Is Ever Known, And Inevitably We Come To A Place Quite Different From The One We Set Out For.
One Direction
Different
Bumps
Solitary. But Not In The Sense Of Being Alone. Not Solitary In The Way Thoreau Was, For Example, Exiling Himself In Order To Find Out Where He Was; Not Solitary In The Way Jonah Was, Praying For Deliverance In The Belly Of The Whale. Solitary In The Sense Of Retreat. In The Sense Of Not Having To See Himself, Of Not Having To See Himself Being Seen By Anyone Else.
Order
Whales
Example
In The End, Each Life Is No More Than The Sum Of Contingent Facts, A Chronicle Of Chance Intersections, Of flukes, Of Random Events That Divulge Nothing But Their Own Lack Of Purpose.
Events
Purpose
Facts
There's A Difference Between Doing Memoir And Writing A Novel. If I Had Put The Story Of The Boy Killing My Dog - And That Was Eric Also, What A Little Monster He Was! - In A Novel, Even If I Took It Directly From Life, It Would Be Fiction.
Dog
Writing
Boys
Memory Is The Space In Which A Thing Happens For A Second Time.
Memories
Space
Happens
It Would Be A Terrible World If Everyone Was An Artist. Nothing Would Get Done!
Artist
Would Be
Done
Everyone Reads A Different Book. That's What's Interesting. Everyone Sees A Different Film, As Well. We Bring Our Past Lives To Whatever Work Of Art We're Experiencing At That Moment, And That's What Makes It Interesting. It's Not Mathematics. There Are Different Answers For Different People.
Art
Book
Past
Some People Are Great, And They Approach Each Work With Honesty, And That's Wonderful. But When People Have Built Up A Sort Of Resentment Or Animosity For Reasons That Are Hard To Put Your Finger On, They Read In Bad Faith.
Honesty
People
Resentment
Reason And Memory Are Nearly Always At Odds.
Memories
Odds
Reason
For Me A Paragraph In A Novel Is A Bit Like A Line In A Poem. It Has Its Own Shape, Its Own Music, Its Own Integrity.
Integrity
Shapes
Lines
I Was Extremely Shy. And I Simply Didn't Know How To Go About It. It Seemed A Lot Easier To Write Than To Make Films. All I Needed Was A Pencil And A Piece Of Paper, Whereas Filmmaking Was Something I Had No Access To.
Writing
Paper
Shy
Most People Just Want To Be Part Of The World, They Want To Live, Love, And Enjoy Themselves - To Take Part In The World Around Them. Whereas Artists Are Always Retreating, Locking The Door, And Inventing Other Worlds.
Artist
Doors
Other Worlds
I Think That Sense Of Unreality Inspired Me To Write The Story Within The Book That [august] Brill Tells Himself, One Of The Stories He Tells Himself.
Book
Writing
Thinking
Just The Fact That Hilary Clinton Won The Popular Vote By Such A Large Number Gives Some Validation To The Impulse To Stand Firm. If We Don't, I Think Within A Year Administration Is Pretty Much Going To Dismantle American Society As We've Known It. I'm Not Sure That We're Able To Stop It From Happening, But I Don't Think People Should Just Roll Over And Passively Watch It Happen.
Thinking
People
Giving
When The Father Dies, He Writes, The Son Becomes His Own Father And His Own Son. He Looks At Is Son And Sees Himself In The Face Of The Boy. He Imagines What The Boy Sees When He Looks At Him And Finds Himself Becoming His Own Father. Inexplicably, He Is Moved By This. It Is Not Just The Sight Of The Boy That Moves Him, Not Even The Thought Of Standing Inside His Father, But What He Sees In The Boy Of His Own Vanished Past. It Is A Nostalgia For His Own Life That He Feels, Perhaps, A Memory Of His Own Boyhood As A Son To His Father.
Memories
Father
Moving
Our Lives Carry Us Along In Ways We Cannot Control, And Almost Nothing Stays With Us. It Dies When We Do, And Death Is Something That Happens To Us Every Day.
Way
Happens
Dies
We Grow Older, But We Do Not Change. We Become More Sophisticated, But At Bottom We Continue To Resemble Our Young Selves, Eager To Listen To The Next Story And The Next, And The Next.
Self
Stories
Next
And Now We Get To The Hard Part. The Endings, The Farewells, And The Famous Last Words. If You Don't Hear From Me Often, Remember That You're In My Thoughts.
Farewell
Lasts
Remember
A Here Exists Only In Relation To A There, Not The Other Way Around. There's This Only Because There's That; If We Don't Look Up, We'll Never Know What's Down. Think Of It, Boy. We Find Ourselves Only By Looking What We're Not. You Can't Put Your Feet On The Ground Until You've Touched The Sky.
Thinking
Boys
Feet
Every Life Is Inexplicable, I Kept Telling Myself. No Matter How Many Facts Are Told, No Matter How Many Details Are Given, The Essential Thing Resists Telling. To Say That So And So Was Born Here And Went There, That He Did This And Did That, That He Married This Woman And Had These Children, That He Lived, That He Died, That He Left Behind These Books Or This Battle Or That Bridge – None Of That Tells Us Very Much.
Children
Book
Bridges
Surely It Is An Odd Way To Spend Your Life - Sitting Alone In A Room With A Pen In Your Hand, Hour After Hour, Day After Day, Year After Year, Struggling To Put Words On Pieces Of Paper In Order To Give Birth To What Does Not Exist - Except In Your Head. Why On Earth Would Anyone Want To Do Such A Thing? The Only Answer I Have Ever Been Able To Come Up With Is: Because You Have To, Because You Have No Choice.
Struggle
Writing
Hands
I Don't Like Talking About My Work At All. I Find It Very Difficult. I Never Know What To Say. It's Too Close To Me, And There's So Many Things Happening Unconsciously While I'm Working That I'm Not Aware Of, And People Will Point These Things Out To Me, And I'll Say, "that's Interesting." But I Don't Know What To Make Of It.
Talking
People
Interesting
I Barely Can Go Shopping For Clothes. I Find It Difficult To Walk Into Stores. The Whole Thing Bores Me So Much.
Shopping
Clothes
Stores
What If I Had Been Born During A War And I Lived In An Occupied City, And People Were Being Taken Out And Shot Every Day? Everything Would Be Different - Even After The War Ended, My Future Would Be Very Different. Look At What These Poor People In Aleppo Are Going Through. The Children, The Ones Who Survive, Are Going To Be Absolutely Altered By What They Live Through, And You And I, Luckily, Have Never Had To Deal With That.
Children
War
Taken
There Is A Double Rhythm In All Human Beings. We Are Binary Beings - Two Arms, Two Legs, Two Eyes, Two Ears. Two Legs For Walking. And The Heartbeat Thumping In Our Chest Mirrors That.
Heart
Eye
Mirrors
The Moon People Do Not Eat By Swallowing Food But By Smelling It. Their Money Is Poetry - Actual Poems, Written Out On Pieces Of Paper Whose Value Is Determined By The Worth Of The Poem Itself.
Moon
People
Swallowing
I'd Go Nuts. Because People Look At The Same Passage And One Person Will Say This Is The Best Thing He's Ever Read, And Another Person Will Say It's Absolutely Idiotic. I Mean, There's No Way To Reconcile Those Two Things. You Just Have To Forget The Whole Business Of What People Are Saying.
Mean
Two
Nuts
I Think Human Beings Wouldn't Be Human Without Narrative Fiction.
Thinking
Fiction
Narrative
I Wanted To Do Something Different. Therefore, The First Person I Thought Would Have Been Too Exclusionary. It Would Have Said Me, Me, Me, Me, Me. I, I, I, I, I. As If I Were Pushing Away My Experiences From The Experiences Of Others. Because Basically What I Was Trying To Do Was Show Our Commonality. I Mean To Say, In The Very Ordinariness Of What I Recount I Think Perhaps The Reader Will Find Resonances With His Or Her Own Life.
Mean
Thinking
Trying
I Project Myself So Deeply Into The Characters In Novels That I'm Not Thinking About My Own Life.
Character
Thinking
Projects
What I'm Trying To Do [in Winter Journal] Is To Tell The Story Of A Man's Life From Birth, But There Are Different Versions Of Him, Four Different Versions.
Winter
Men
Trying
When I Look Back At Experience [with My Father], All I Can Do Is Feel Pity. You Know, How Torn He Was About How To Act, What To Say. And It Seems An Important Story To Me.
Father
Important
Looks
Memory And The Imagination Are Almost Identical. It's The Same Place In The Brain And The Same Thing Is Happening. When You Think About Your Own Life, There Are No Memories Without Place. You Are Always Situated Somewhere. I Think The Imagination - The Narrative Imagination At Least - Situates You In A Specific Space When You Start To Think Of A Story. I Often Use Places I Know. I Put My Characters Inside Rooms And Houses That I'm Familiar With - Sometimes The Houses Of My Parents Or Grandparents Or Previous Apartments I've Lived In.
Memories
Character
Thinking
He No Longer Wished To Be Dead. At The Same Time, It Cannot Be Said That He Was Glad To Be Alive. But At Least He Did Not Resent It. He Was Alive, And The Stubbornness Of This Fact Had Little By Little Begun To Fascinate Him - As If He Had Managed To Outlive Himself, As If He Were Somehow Living A Posthumous Life.
Glad To Be Alive
Littles
Facts
I Thought I Was Terrible [to Play A Cameo] And Decided Never To Act Again.
Play
Terrible
Cameos
The Biggest Book For Me, When I Was Fifteen, Was Crime And Punishment, Which I Read In A Kind Of Fever. When I Put It Down, I Thought, If This Is What Novels Are Then I Want To Be A Novelist.
Book
Punishment
Novelists
"the Weird World Rolls On..." Meaning That Through All The Ups And Downs, All The Travails That We Go Through, All The Horrors, All The Wars, All The Deaths, All The Cruelties, There's Still Something That Keeps Us Wanting To Wake Up The Next Morning And Go On With Our Lives - To Make Children, To Fall In Love, To Continue Humanity.
Falling In Love
Morning
Children
Stories Surge Up Out Of Nowhere, And If They Feel Compelling, You Follow Them. You Let Them Unfold Inside You And See Where They Are Going To Lead.
Stories
Feels
Compelling
The Real Is Always Way Ahead Of What We Can Imagine.
Real
Way
Imagine
I'm In Constant Inner Dialogue With My Father Still.
Father
Dialogue
Constant
I've Dealt With Numbers All My Life, Of Course, And After A While You Begin To Feel That Each Number Has A Personality Of Its Own. A Twelve Is Very Different From A Thirteen, For Example. Twelve Is Upright, Conscientious, Intelligent, Whereas Thirteen Is A Loner, A Shady Character Who Won't Think Twice About Breaking The Law To Get What He Wants. Eleven Is Tough, An Outdoorsman Who Likes Tramping Through Woods And Scaling Mountains; Ten Is Rather Simpleminded, A Bland Figure Who Always Does What He's Told; Nine Is Deep And Mystical, A Buddha Of Contemplation.
Character
Math
Intelligent
Books Demand More. You Have To Be A More Active Participant.
Book
Demand
Active
The Things We Remember Are Often Things That Have Great Emotional Importance, And So They Have A Lasting Effect.
Emotional
Remember
Importance
I'm Not A Man Deeply Interested In Technology. It Eludes Me. I Confess I Don't Even Have A Computer, I Don't Have A Cell Phone.
Men
Technology
Phones
You Think It Will Never Happen To You, That It Cannot Happen To You, That You Are The Only Person In The World To Whom None Of These Things Will Ever Happen, And Then, One By One, They All Begin To Happen To You, In The Same Way They Happen To Everyone Else.
Thinking
World
Way
Farts Come From No One And Nowhere; They Are Anonymous Emanations That Belong To The Group As A Whole, And Even When Every Person In The Room Can Point To The Culprit, The Only Sane Course Of Action Is Denial.
Groups
Denial
Rooms
The Pen Will Never Be Able To Move Fast Enough To Write Down Every Word Discovered In The Space Of Memory. Some Things Have Been Lost Forever, Other Things Will Perhaps Be Remembered Again, And Still Other Things Have Been Lost And Found And Lost Again. There Is No Way To Be Sure Of Any This.
Memories
Moving
Writing
I'm Generous. I Give Good Tips. It's Just - The Way I Live My Life, Ironically Enough, Is: I Don't Want Anything. I'm Not A Consumer. I Don't Crave Objects.
Giving
Want
Way
In The Same Way, The World Is Not The Sum Of All The Things That Are In It. It Is The Infinitely Complex Network Of Connections Among Them. As In The Meanings Of Words, Things Take On Meaning Only In Relationship To Each Other.
Connections
World
Way
Changing Your Mind Is Probably One Of The Most Beautiful Things People Can Do. And I've Changed My Mind About A Lot Of Things Over The Years.
Beautiful
Years
People
The Pictures Do Not Lie, But Neither Do They Tell The Whole Story. They Are Merely A Record Of Time Passing, The Outward Evidence.
Photography
Lying
Stories
I Guess The Important Thing For Young Writers Is To Read.
Important
Young Writers
Young
Holes In The Memory. You Grab On To Some Things, Others Have Completely Disappeared.
Memories
Holes
Writing Is A Solitary Business. It Takes Over Your Life. In Some Sense, A Writer Has No Life Of His Own. Even When He’s There, He’s Not Really There.
Writing
Solitary
It's Always A Mystery To Me, I Have To Confess. I've Never Been Able To Witness The Birth Of An Idea. It Seems As If One Second, There's Nothing Particularly Going On, And The Next Second, Something Is There.
Ideas
Able
Next
Those Of Us Who Can Remember Our Childhoods Will Recall How Ardently We Relished The Moment Of The Bedtime Story, When Our Mother Or Father Would Sit Down Beside Us In The Semi-dark And Read From A Book Of Fairy Tales.
Mother
Father
Book
The Kind Of Fiction I'm Trying To Write Is About Telling The Truth.
Writing
Trying
Fiction
I Can Never Say 'why' About Anything I Do. I Suppose I Can Say 'how' And 'when' And 'what.' But 'why' Is Impenetrable To Me.
I Can
I Do Not Repeat Conversations That I Can't Remember. And It's Something That Irritates Me A Great Deal, Because I Think Most Memoirs Are False Novels.
Thinking
Remember
Conversation
Money, Of Course, Is Never Just Money. It's Always Something Else, And It's Always Something More, And It Always Has The Last Word.
Lasts
Last Words
Courses
How Can You Think About The World Without Factoring In The Unforseen, The Fluke Event?
Thinking
Events
World
I Believe That The Whole Idea Of The Consumer Society Is Tottering. We've Kept Ourselves Going By Producing More And More Goods, Most Of Which People Don't Need. I'm Anti-consumerism; I Own Four Pairs Of Black Levis And That's It.
Believe
Ideas
People
There Are Often References To Childhood, But They're Rarely The Focus Of The [my] Novels.
Focus
Childhood
Novel
I Say At The Very End Of "winter Journal" That I Do Dream About My Father Often. I Think I Have A Tremendous Compassion For Him, Which Has Grown Over The Years. A Certain Kind Of Pity For Him Also In That He Was So Unrealised As A Human Being, So Dogged, And So Shut-off From People In Many Ways. You Know, I've Been Writing Another Book, And It's Another Non-fiction Autobiographical Work, Kind Of A Compliment To "winter Journal", And It's Just Finished.
Dream
Father
Book
In A Sense I Am Able To Interrogate Myself, Address Myself From That Slight Distance And Enter A Kind Of Dialogical Relationship With Myself. Because I'm Saying, "look, These Are Things That Have Happened To Me, But How Odd They Are Or How Ordinary They Are [is Up To The Reader To Decide]."
Distance
Ordinary
Looks
My Wife Is My First Reader, My First Line Of Defence I Suppose. So She Says, "oh Well, Oh Yes, It's All True." At The Same Time, I Could Have Written Much More About Us, But I Didn't Want To Go Any Further. I Did Cut Things Out. There Are Certain Things That I Wrote About Her That Are So Gushing With Praise And Admiration That When I Looked At Those Passages I Realised They Would Be Ridiculous To Anybody Else.
Cutting
Wife
Lines
Reading, At The Deepest Level, Is A Physical Experience. Most People Are Not Attuned To This, Most People Don't Learn How To Read - Poetry For Example, Or High-quality Prose. They're Used To Reading Magazines And Newspapers, Which Are Only Of The Mind, But Not Of The Body.
Reading
People
Mind
All I Wanted To Do Was Write - At The Time, Poems, And Prose, Too. I Guess My Ambition Was Simply To Make Money However I Could To Keep Myself Going In Some Modest Way, And I Didn't Need Much, I Was Unmarried At The Time, No Children.
Children
Writing
Ambition
You See, The Interesting Thing About Books, As Opposed, Say, To Films, Is That It's Always Just One Person Encountering The Book, It's Not An Audience, It's One To One.
Book
Interesting
Film
Even In New York, There Are A Lot Of Very Attractive Girls Pedaling Around. That Just Happens To Be One Of The Nice Sights In Our City, Seeing A Young Woman On A Bike.
Girl
New York
Nice
Some Like To Think That A Keen Appreciation Of Art Can Actually Make Us Better People - More Just, More Moral, More Sensitive, More Understanding. Perhaps That Is True - In Certain Rare, Isolated Cases.
Appreciation
Art
Thinking
It Always Stimulates Me To Discover New Examples Of My Own Prejudice And Stupidity, To Realize That I Don't Know Half As Much As I Think I Do.
Thinking
Stupidity
Example
The Mental State I'm In Is Completely Different, But The Act Of Trying To Write Is The Same. I Mean, In All Instances You Try To Write Good Sentences. But In A Novel You're Free To Do Whatever You Want, And In The Autobiographical Works You Can't Make Things Up.
Writing
Mean
Trying
Actually, Screenplays Were Much More Detailed Than What I Did In The Book In The Book I Had To Invent A Style For Communicating What The Sensation Of Looking At A Film Would Be, Whereas The Screenplays I Wrote In Paris Were Actual Blueprints For How To Do The Film, With Every Gesture, Every Little Movement Noted In Exhaustive Detail.
Book
Paris
Style
I Like The Sound A Typewriter Makes.
Typewriters
Sound
I Think There Might Be Some Pressure Released While I'm Doing Autobiographical Work, But Afterwards Everything Remains The Same.
Thinking
Might
Pressure
We Hear Things, But We Can't Always See Them, Or, Even If We Do See Them, We're Not Sure That We're Seeing Correctly. Hence: Invisible.
Invisible
Not Sure
Seeing
Nothing Lasts, You See, Not Even The Thoughts Inside You. And You Musn't Waste Your Time Looking For Them. Once A Thing Is Gone, That Is The End Of It.
Gone
Lasts
Waste
Stories Happen Only To Those Who Are Able To Tell Them, Someone Once Said. In The Same Way, Perhaps, Experiences Present Themselves Only To Those Who Are Able To Have Them.
Stories
Able
Way
I Never Would Have Thought Of That Word, "hospitality." I Settle Into The Rhythm Of My Steps.
Steps
Hospitality
Settling
History Is Present In All My Novels. And Whether I Am Directly Talking About The Sociological Moment Or Just Immersing My Character In The Environment, I Am Very Aware Of It.
Character
Talking
Environment
[charles] Reznikoff Was In Between Faiths, In Between Worlds... A Double, Hyphenated American. I Think It Probably Goes Deeper Than That.
Thinking
World
Deeper
I Never Experiment With Anything In My Books. Experimentation Means You Don't Know What You're Doing.
Book
Mean
Experiments
We All Want To Believe In Impossible Things, I Suppose, To Persuade Ourselves That Miracles Can Happen.
Believe
Impossible Things
Miracle
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