Auster is a mind reader --

It wasn't that he had ever wanted a great deal from life, but the little he wanted turned out to be beyond his grasp: to finish his doctorate, to find a place in some university English department, and then to spend the next forty or fifty years teaching and writing books. That was all he had ever aspired to, with a wife thrown into the bargain, maybe, and a kid or two to go along with her. It had never felt like too much to ask for, but after three years of struggling to write his dissertation, Tom finally understood that he didn't have it in him to finish. Or, if he did have it in him, he couldn't persuade himself to belive in the value of doing it anymore.

- From The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster