There is so much to steal from Paul Auster--but first and foremost, the general ambiance of M.S. Fogg's narrative voice (which sounds like a boat name to me).
A few lines that I will either steal verbatim (epigraph?) or at least, steal in spirit:
"My life had become a gathering zero, and it was a thing I could actually see: a palpable, burgeoning emptiness...The room was a machine that measured my condition: how much of me remained, how much of me was no longer there. I was both perpetrator and witness, both actor and audience in a theater of one. I could follow the progress of my own dismemberment. Piece by piece, I could watch myself disappear" (24).
"Byrne told me that you can't fix your exact position on earth without referring to some point in the sky. Something to do with triangulation, the technique of measurement, I forget the details. The crux was compelling to me, though, it's never left me since. A man can't know where he is on the earth except in relation to the moon or a star. ... We find ourselves only by looking to what we're not. You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky" (151-2).
