I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table. – Paul Auster
We construct a narrative for ourselves, and thats the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread. – Paul Auster
I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasnt that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. Id already been translating French poetry, Id been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went. – Paul Auster
There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said “Let us pray,” and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. – Desmond M. Tutu, “Religious Human Rights and the Bible”