Nicole Krauss: Trending quotes

“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?”

“He died alone because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone.”

“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.”

“Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”

“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”

“The truth is the thing I invented so I could live.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“… 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…”

“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”

“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.”

“Wittgenstein once wrote that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. I wish I could draw you.”

“… larger than life… I've never understood that expression. What's larger than life?”

“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.”