Nicole Krauss

Quotes

1. Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement.

   p. 349

2. 

   The words of our childhood became strangers to us- we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.

   p. 6

3. 

   Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name.

   p. 8

4. 

   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.

   p. 11

5. 

   These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down.

   p. 70

6. 

   The little boy I watched throwing pebbles into the empty fountain [...] You could tell that he had too much wisdom for his age. Probably he believed that he wasn't made for this world. I wanted to say to him: If not you, who?

   p. 351

7. 

   Perhaps that is what it means to be a father- to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.

   p. 164

8. 

   Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I'm not older than the rain. It's been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling.

   p. 349

9. 

   “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 queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair.

10. 

    All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.

    p. 5

11. 

    When I got up again, I'd shed the only part of me that had ever thought I'd find words for even the smallest bit of life.

    p. 8

12. 

    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.

    p. 7