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.
Paul AusterRead
I woke up one day and thought: 'I want to write a book about the history of my body.' I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the interconnectedness of identity and origin, emphasizing personal history tied to familial roots.
In this quote, Paul Auster explores the concept of identity through a physical and metaphorical lens, suggesting that our existence and experiences are intertwined with those of our ancestors. By expressing a desire to write about the history of his body, he acknowledges how the journey of self-discovery is deeply rooted in familial relationships, particularly with his mother, whose body was the vessel for his own life, and thus, the history of one's body is also a history of family and heritage.
Themes
IdentityHistoryFamilySelf-DiscoveryBody
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on personal growth, one might quote Auster to illustrate the importance of understanding one’s roots.
More from Paul Auster
All quotes →For a man who finds life tolerable only by staying on the surface of himself, it is natural to be satisfied with offering no more than his surface to others. There are few demands to be met, and no commitment is required. Marriage, on the other hand, closes the door. Your existence is confined to a narrow space in which you are constantly forced to reveal yourself – and therefore, constantly obliged to look into yourself, to examine your own depths.
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He knew that his wings could ignite at any moment, but the closer he came to touching the fire, the more he sensed that he was fulfilling his destiny. As he put it in his journal that night: If I mean to save my life, then I have to come within an inch of destroying it.
Paul AusterRead
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.
Paul AusterRead
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.
Paul AusterRead
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.
Paul AusterRead
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