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30c117d
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Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
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Nicole Krauss |
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1632796
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When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?
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Nicole Krauss |
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9c6e24e
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there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.
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sadness
sad
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Nicole Krauss |
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2c45297
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Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone's hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted--wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Pa..
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romance
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Nicole Krauss |
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615d70a
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What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" "Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you."
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Nicole Krauss |
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a254e61
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I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.
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bitterness
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Nicole Krauss |
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063076b
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Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was que..
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love
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Nicole Krauss |
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36f08df
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Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.
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Nicole Krauss |
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ed574fd
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At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.
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Nicole Krauss |
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9b7ecf2
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And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it.
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Nicole Krauss |
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5dd9db7
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Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.
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Nicole Krauss |
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e377489
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She was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a woman would have been impossible without Alma. If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it.
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Nicole Krauss |
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e3e848f
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Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.
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Nicole Krauss |
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3e07206
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So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme.... There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to the..
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love
poignant
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Nicole Krauss |
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88e5105
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The truth is the thing I invented so I could live.
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Nicole Krauss |
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056f37b
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If I had a camera," I said, "I'd take a picture of you every day. That way I'd remember how you looked every single day of your life." "I look exactly the same." "No, you don't. You're changing all the time. Every day a tiny bit. If I could, I'd keep a record of it all." "If you're so smart, how did I change today?" "You got a fraction of a millimeter taller, for one thing. Your hair grew a fraction of a millimeter longer. And your breast..
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romance
sadness
happiness
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Nicole Krauss |
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98724b6
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When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.
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Nicole Krauss |
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af03c05
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We met each other when we were young, before we knew enough about disappointment, and once we did we found we reminded each other of it.
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relationships
young-love
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Nicole Krauss |
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ab0497a
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She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrif..
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loss
sadness
love
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Nicole Krauss |
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b618e65
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An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand...
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Nicole Krauss |
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1530317
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I was never a man of great ambition I cried too easily I didn't have a head for science Words often failed me While others prayed I only moved my lips
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Nicole Krauss |
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87c97d5
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Franz Kafka is Dead He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put thei..
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Nicole Krauss |
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e55a3d0
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For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love...
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Nicole Krauss |
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6ce1933
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The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely. During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival de..
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Nicole Krauss |
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99d2d0e
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ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.
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Nicole Krauss |
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f3ec890
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Wittgenstein once wrote that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. I wish I could draw you.
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Nicole Krauss |
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ca431bc
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larger than life...I've never understood that expression. What's larger than life?
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Nicole Krauss |
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15f676b
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She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos.
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Nicole Krauss |
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438d1cd
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15. WHENEVER I WENT OUT TO PLAY, MY MOTHER WANTED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO BE When I'd come in, she'd call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She'd stroke my hair and say, 'I love you so much,' and when I sneezed she'd say, 'Bless you, you know how much I love you, don't you?' and when I got up for a tissue she'd say, 'Let me get that for you I love you so much,' and when I looked for a pen to do..
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Nicole Krauss |
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339e4e4
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All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.
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philosophy
grief-and-loss
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Nicole Krauss |
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dbcdaef
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One day she marched around the side of the house and confronted me. "I've seen you out there every day for the past week, and everyone knows you stare at me all day in school, if you have something you want to say to me why don't you just say it to my face instead of sneaking around like a crook?" I considered my options. Either I could run away and never go back to school again, maybe even leave the country as a stowaway on a ship bound fo..
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Nicole Krauss |
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5fe2b0f
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When you are young, you think it's going to be solved by love. But it never is. Being close -- as close as you can get -- to another person only makes clear that impassable distance between you.'
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Nicole Krauss |
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9cb8b3a
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Mom?" I said. She turned. "Can I talk to you about something?" "Of course, darling. Come here." I took a few steps into the room. There was so much I wanted to say. "I need you to be --" I said, and then I started to cry. "Be what?" she said, opening her arms. "Not sad," I said."
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Nicole Krauss |
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f632ce1
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Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the one thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, be..
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Nicole Krauss |
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e43025d
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Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
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Nicole Krauss |
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fd827c2
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I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even when I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded I'll even go so far as dropping change all over the floor, nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. All I want is not to die on a day I went unseen.
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Nicole Krauss |
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64c9310
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I left the library. Crossing the street, I was hit head-on by a brutal loneliness. I felt dark and hollow. Abandoned, unnoticed, forgotten, I stood on the sidewalk, a nothing, a gatherer of dust. People hurried past me. and everyone who walked by was happier than I. I felt the old envy. I would have given anything to be one of them.
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loneliness
hollow
forgotten
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Nicole Krauss |
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4b947bc
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Let's stand under a tree," she said. "Why?" "Because it's nicer." "Maybe you should sit on a chair, and I'll stand above you, like they always do with husbands and wives." "That's stupid." "Why's it stupid?" "Because we're not married." "Should we hold hands?" "We can't." "But why?" "Because, people will know." "Know what?" "About us." "So what if they know?" "It's better when it's a secret." "Why?" "So no one can take it from us.")"
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Nicole Krauss |
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964afe0
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HOW ANGELS SLEEP. Unsoundly. They toss and turn, trying to understand the mystery of the living. They know so little about what it's like to fill a new prescription for glasses and suddenly see the world again, with a mixture of disappointment and gratitude ... Also, they don't dream. For this reason, they have one less thing to talk about. In a backward way, when they wake up they feel as if there is something they are forgetting to tell e..
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dreams
sadness
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Nicole Krauss |
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67c72ed
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Sometimes I thought about nothing and sometimes I thought about my life. At least I made a living. What kind of living? A living. It wasn't easy. I found out how little is unbearable.
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Nicole Krauss |
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8a9d6fd
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One of us had loved the other more perfectly, had watched the other more closely, and one of us listened and the other hadn't, and one of us held on to the ambition of the one idea far longer than was reasonable, whereas the other, passing a garbage can one night, had casually thrown it away.
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Nicole Krauss |
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9226f05
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The truth was I'd given up waiting long ago. The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. Or better to say, in face. Grammar of my life: as a rule of thumb, wherever there appears a plural, correct for singular. Should I ever let slip a royal put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.
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Nicole Krauss |
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9229335
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Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, and distant. once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photographs.
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Nicole Krauss |
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193304d
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He wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard [...]. How could he have forgotten what he had always known: there is no match for the silence of God.
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Nicole Krauss |