City of Glass Quotes

“Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“They had come to the end of what they could talk about. Beyond that point there was nothing: the random thoughts of men who knew nothing.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“And that's finally all anyone wants out of a book- to be amused”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Would it be possible, he wondered, to stand up before the world and with the utmost conviction spew out lies and nonsense? To say that windmills were knights, that a barber’s basin was a helmet, that puppets were real people? Would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him? In other words, to what extent would people tolerate blasphemies if they gave them amusement? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? To any extent. For the proof is that we still read the book. It remains highly amusing to us. And that’s finally all anyone wants out of a book—to be amused.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“If you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“The telephone was not his favorite object, and more than once he had considered getting rid of his. What he disliked most of all was its tyranny. Not only did it have the power to interrupt him against his will, but inevitably he would give in to its command.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“You can't hate something so violently unless a part of you also loves it.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal, and it no longer mattered where he was.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“If some saw the Indians as living in prelapsarian innocence, there were others who judged them to be savage beasts, devils in the form of men. The discovery of cannibals in the Caribbean did nothing to assuage this opinion. The Spaniards used it as a justification to exploit the natives mercilessly for their own mercantile ends. For if you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him. It was not until 1537, with the papal bull of Paul III that the Indians were declared to be true men possessing souls.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“I have come to New York because it is the most forlorn of places, the most abject. The brokenness is everywhere, the disarray is universal. You have only to open your eyes to see it. The broken people, the broken things, the broken thoughts. The whole city is a junk heap.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“What will happen when there are no more pages in the red notebook?”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. They have not adapted themselves to the new reality. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. It's made a mess of everything. But words, as you yourself understand, are capable of change. The problem is how to demonstrate this. That is why I now work with the simplest means possible - so simple that even a child can grasp what I am saying. Consider a word that refers to a thing - "umbrella", for example. When I say the word "umbrella", you see the object in your mind. You see a kind of stick, with collapsible metal spokes on top that form an armature for a waterproof material which, when opened, will protect you from the rain. This last detail is important. Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function - in other words, expresses the will of man. When you stop to think of it, every object is similar to the umbrella, in that it serves a function. A pencil is for writing, a shoe is for wearing, a car is for driving. Now, my question is this. What happens when a thing no longer performs its function ? Is it still the thing or has it become something else ? When you rip the cloth off the umbrella, is the umbrella still an umbrella ? You open the spokes, put them over your head, walk out into the rain, and you get drenched. Is it possible to go one calling this object an umbrella ? In general, people do. At the very limit, they will say the umbrella is broken. To me this is a serious error, the source of all our troubles. Because it can no longer perform its function, the umbrella has ceased to be an umbrella. It might resemble an umbrella, it might once have been an umbrella, but now it has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore, it can no longer express the thing. It is imprecise; it is false; it hides the thing it is supposed to reveal. And if we cannot even name a common, everyday object that we hold in our hands, how can we expect to speak of the things that truly concern us? Unless we can begin to embody the position of change in the words we use, we will continue to be lost.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Time makes us grow old, but it also gives us the day and the night...Lying is a bad thing. It makes you sorry you were ever born. And not to have been born is a curse. You are condemned to live outside time. And when you live outside time, there is no day and night. You don't get a chance to die.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“So...what are you working on now?"

“Right now, an essay about Don Quixote.”

“One of my favorite books.”

“Mine too.”

“What’s the gist?”

“It has to do with the authorship of the books.”

“Is there any question?”

“I mean the book inside the book Cervantes wrote, the one he imagined he was writing.”

“Ah.”

“Cervantes claims he is not the author, that the original text was in Arabic.”

“Right. It’s an attack on make-believe, so he must claim it was real.”

“Precisely. Therefore, the story has to be written by an eyewitness yet Cid Hamete Benengeli, the acknowledged author, never makes an appearance. So who is he? Sancho Panza is of course the witness – illiterate, but with a gift for language. He dictated the story to the barber and the priest, Don Quixote’s friends. They had the manuscript translated into Arabic. Cervantes found the translation and had it rendered back into Spanish. The idea was to hold up a mirror to Don Quixote’s madness so that when he finally read the book himself, he would see the error of his ways. But Don Quixote, in my view, was no mad. He only pretended to be. He engineered the collaboration, and the translation from Arabic back into Spanish. I like to imagine Cervantes hiring Don Quixote in disguise to decipher the story of Don Quixote.”

“But why did Quixote go to such lengths?”

“He wanted to test the gullibility of man. To what extent would people tolerate blasphemies, lies, and nonsense if they gave them amusement? The answer: to any extent. For the book is still amusing us today. That’s finally all anyone wants out of a book. To be amused.”
― David Mazzucchelli, City of Glass

“The longer I listened, the harder I found it to leave. To get inside that music: perhaps that is a place where one could finally disappear.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Unless we can begin to embody the notion of change in the words we use, we will continue to be lost.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“So. There are a great many things. I am trying to tell them to you. I know that all is not right in my head. And it is true, yes, and I say this of my own free will, that sometimes I just scream and scream. For no good reason. As if there had to be a reason. But for none that I can see. Or anyone else. No. And then there are the times when I say nothing. For days and days on end. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I forget how to make the words come out of my mouth. Then it is hard for me to move. Ya ya. Or even to see. That is when I become Mr. Sad.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“He read many books, he looked at paintings, he went to the movies. In the summer he watched baseball on television in the winter he went to the opera. More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city—never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Mentir es una mala cosa. Hace que lamentes haber nacido. Y no haber nacido es una maldición. Estás condenado a vivir fuera del tiempo. Y cuando vives fuera del tiempo no hay día y noche. Ni siquiera tienes la oportunidad de morirte".”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“La memoria è una gran benedizione, Peter. E' la cosa più bella dopo la morte.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“The impediment to the building of Babel—that man must fill the earth—would be eliminated. At that moment it would again be possible for the whole earth to be of one language and one speech. And if that were to happen, paradise could not be far behind.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Anything for the truth. No sacrifice is too great.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

“Ya no deseaba estar muerto. Al mismo tiempo, no se puede decir que se alegrara de estar vivo, pero por lo menos no le molestaba. Estaba vivo, y la persistencia de este hecho había empezado poco a poco a fascinarle, como si hubiera conseguido sobrevivirse, como si en cierto modo estuviera viviendo una vida póstuma. Ya no dormía con la lámpara encendida y desde hacía muchos meses no recordaba ninguno de sus sueños.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass