Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"I tried to make sense of things. Now that I think about it, I have always tried. It could be my epitaph. LEO GURSKY: HE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE."
39 Quotes
"I tried to make sense of things. Now that I think about it, I have always tried. It could be my epitaph. LEO GURSKY: HE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE."
"فكرتُ أن أُدرك كُنه الأشياء. والآن، إذ أتأمل، أجدني ما فتئتُ أحاول. ربما كان هذا نقشي الأخير: ليو غورْسكي: حاول أن يُدرك الكُنه."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"...larger than life... I've never understood that expression. What's larger than life?"
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"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."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"My son's mother, the girl I fell in love with when I was ten, died five years ago. I expect to join her soon, at least in that. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Of that I am convinced. I thought it would be strange to live in the world without her in it. And yet. I'd gotten used to living with her memory a long time ago. Only at the very end did I see her again. I snuck into her room in the hospital and sat with her every day."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?"
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"It's one of those unforgettable moments that happen as a child, when you discover that all along the world has been betraying you."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"Maybe Grodzenski was showing me, with his quiet pride, the reason he hummed a little while he worked."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"HE LIKED TO COOK AND LAUGH AND SING, COULD START A FIRE WITH HIS HANDS, FIX THINGS THAT WERE BROKEN, AND EXPLAIN HOW TO LAUNCH THINGS INTO SPACE, BUT HE DIED WITHIN NINE MONTHS"
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"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."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"From then on, I was terrified that I or one of my parents were going to die. My mother worried me the most. She was the force around which our world turned. Unlike our father, who spent his life in the clouds, my mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all of 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 martyrdrom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"Having begun to feel, people’s desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"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."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"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."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"The air felt different in my lungs. The world no longer looked the same. You change and then you change again. You become a dog, a bird, a plant that always leans to the left. Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food in the night it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"Aside from myself, there was no sign of me."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"She abandoned the garden, and the mums and asters that had trusted her to see them through to the first frost hung their waterlogged heads."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"Empty teacups gathered around her and dictionary pages fell at her feet."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
"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."
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
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