Paul AusterThinkers

The Artist is one who, in contrast to most people who just want to be part of the world, are always retreating, locking the door, and inventing other worlds.

The Artist is, necessarily, in one way or another, a wounded person. It's not natural to make art.

The Artist is, necessarily, an exception. If everyone was an artist, nothing would get done!

The Artist is a person for whom the world is not enough.

The Book is never the same book in the hands of different readers. Everyone reads a different book.

The Book's power should never be underestimated.

The Book is, in each instance, an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months if not many years, of one man’s solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude.

The Book is interesting in its solitude. As opposed, say, to films, it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.