(1947–2024)
U.S. writer
Paul Auster
Life is so short, so fragile, so mystifying. After all, how many people do we actually love in the course of a lifetime? Just a few, a tiny few. When most of them are gone, the map of your inner world changes. As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV (New York: Picador, 2009), 328.
Each book I’ve written has started off with what I’d call a buzz in the head. A certain kind of music or rhythm, a tone. Most of the effort involved in writing a novel for me is trying to remain faithful to that buzz, that rhythm. It’s a highly intuitive business. You can’t justify it or defend it rationally, but you know when you’ve struck a wrong note, and you’re usually pretty certain when you’ve hit the right one.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV (New York: Picador, 2009), 328–39.