# Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy (1987)

## The Locked Room (3rd novella)

### Chapter 4, page 237

Emphasis mine (no italics in this chapter).

> What I have written so far is no more than a prelude, a quick
> synopsis of everything that comes before the story I have to tell.
> If there were no more to it than this, there would be nothing at all
> -- for nothing would have compelled me to begin. *Only darkness has
> the power to make a man open his heart to the world*, and darkness
> is what surrounds me whenever I think of what happened.

### Chapter 4, page 301

> [...] I tried to prepare myself for it, tried to make myself ready
> for anything. It is the power of this *anything*, I believe, that
> has made the story so difficult to tell. For when anything can
> happen -- that is the precise moment when words begin to fail.