Quotes from work
The History of Love

The History of Love
Nicole Krauss

The History of Love: A Novel is the second novel by the American writer Nicole Krauss, published in 2005. The book was a 2006 finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the 2008 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for fiction.

Nicole Krauss photo

“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

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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 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

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

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

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“Aside from myself, there was no sign of me.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“It's strange what the heart can do when the mind is giving the directions.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“Don’t you see?” I said. “He could change every detail, but he couldn’t change her.” “But why?” His obtuseness frustrated me. “Because he was in love with her!” I said. “Because, to him, she was the only thing that was real.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

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

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 164

Nicole Krauss photo

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Nicole Krauss photo

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

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 8

Nicole Krauss photo

“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 turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees, Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 187