Frases de Paul Auster

“Por vezes, vejo pessoas como eu, da minha idade, que passaram os últimos vinte e cinco anos a trabalhar numa corporação americana. E parecem dez ou quinze anos mais velhas.”

“Diz-se que é preciso viajar para ver o mundo. Por vezes, penso que, se estiveres quieto num único sítio e com os olhos bem abertos, verás tudo o que podes controlar.”

“Eu creio que escrever é o que nos mantém jovens. Qualquer arte mantém as pessoas como novas, porque nunca se reformam.”

“Impressiona-me a uniformização do mundo ocidental. Há vinte anos, podia determinar-se imediatamente a nacionalidade de uma pessoa pela sua indumentária. Hoje já não.”

“Quando tinha cerca de quinze anos, li «Crime e Castigo». Creio que tive então, pela primeira vez, a sensação do que era um romance ou do que podia chegar a ser, e nunca tive dúvidas de que essa foi a experiência que me determinou a ser o que sou.”

“Escrever não é agradável. É um trabalho duro e sofre-se muito. Por momentos, sentimo-nos incapazes: a sensação de fracasso é enorme e isso significa que não há sentimento de satisfação ou de triunfo. Porém, o problema é pior se não escrever: sinto-me perdido. Se não escrever, sinto que a minha vida carece de sentido.”

“Escrever um romance é como correr uma maratona. É preciso ser metódico. Deixas de o fazer um único dia e perdes logo o ritmo; perde-se muito tempo depois, tentando restabelecê-lo.”

“É apaixonante ver como o trabalho realizado em solidão se transforma numa experiência partilhada com muitíssimas pessoas que convergem num mesmo ponto.”

“That's what makes his story so impossible, David. Because he's told me the truth. (Alma to David on Hector)”

“[G]overnments always need enemies, even when they're not at war. If you don't have a real enemy, you make one up and spread the word. It scares the population, and when the people are scared, they tend not to step out of line.”

“The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle.”

“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.”

“Every time my nose gushed blood, I felt like a little boy who'd wet his pants. I jumped out of the chair, pressed a handkerchief against my face, and hustled toward the nearest bathroom […] How red the blood looked against the whiteness of the porcelain sink, I thought. How vividly imagined that color was, how aesthetically shocking. The other fluids that came out of us were dull in comparison, the palest of squirts. Whitish spittle, milky semen, yellow pee, green-brown mucus. We excreted autumn and winter colors, but running invisibly through our veins, the very stuff that kept us alive, was the crimson of a mad artist—a red as brilliant as fresh paint.”

“April 1945. My unit was in Germany, and we were the ones who liberated Dachau. Thirty thousands breathing skeletons. You've seen the pictures, but the pictures don't tell you what it was like. You have to go there and smell it for yourself; you have to be there and touch it with your own hands. Human beings did it to human beings, and they did it with a clear conscience. That was the end of mankind […] I'm sure you've read the stories about how some of them couldn't stop eating. The starved ones. They'd thought about food for so long, they couldn't help it. They ate until their stomachs burst, and they died. Hundreds of them.”

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, does it make a sound or not? Hector had read alot of books by then, he knew all the tricks and arguments of the philosophers. If someone makes a movie and no one sees it, does the movie exist or not?”

“I didn't say I was afraid of dying, I answered, I said that I was afraid to get on a plane. There is a difference.”