Quotes from Nicole Krauss

The accolades, just like the scrapes and bruises, fade in the end, and all you're left with is your ambition.

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

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

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

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

After all who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of their loneliness

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.

The truth is that she told me she couldn't love me. When she said goodbye, she was saying goodbye forever. And yet. I made myself forget. I don't know why. I keep asking myself. But I did.

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.

Then he almost but didn't say the two sentence he'd been meaning to say for years: part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you

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 have always written about characters who fall somewhere in the spectrum between solitary and totally alienated.

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.

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

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.

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.

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

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.' If being in love only made people more lonely, why would everyone want it so much?' Because of the illusion. You fall in love, it's intoxicating, and for a little while you feel like you've actually become one with the other person. Merged souls and so on. You think you'll never be lonely again.

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.

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.

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.

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, being human.

Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

Then he almost but didn't say the two sentence he'd been meaning to say for years: part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you