Nicole Krauss Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• Except for when I was very little and thought that being an "engineer" meant he drove a train. Then I imagined him in the seat of an engine car the color of coal, a string of shiny passenger cars trailing behind. One day my father laughed and corrected me. Everything snapped into focus. 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

  Children, Father, Color

  4 Copy quote

• I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.

  Nicole Krauss

  Mother, Use, Madness

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.257, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• 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. When the sky grew dark they parted with leaves in their hair.

  Nicole Krauss

  Girl, Kings, Queens

  "The History of Love". Book by Nicole Krauss (p.9), 2005.

  8 Copy quote

• Our kiss was niticlimactic. It wasn't that the kiss was bad, but it was just a note of punctuation in our long conversation, a parenthetical remark made in order to assure each other of a deeply felt agreement, a mutual offer of companionship, which is so much more rare than sexual passion or even love.

  Nicole Krauss

  Passion, Kissing, Agreement

  4 Copy quote

• Herman slipped his hand into mine, and I thought, 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, and the next thing that happened was we kissed each other, and I found I knew how, and I felt happy and sad in equal parts, because I knew that I was falling in love, but it wasn't with him.

  Nicole Krauss

  Love, Fall, Average

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.202, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• Now we'd known each other for two years, the side of my calf was touching his shins, and his stomach was against my ribs. He said, "I don't think it's end of world to be my girlfriend." I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

  Nicole Krauss

  Girlfriend, Nice, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nicole Krauss

  Trying, Unseen, Dimes

  4 Copy quote

• He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn't choose that moment to sit on his face. At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him.

  Nicole Krauss

  Morning, Eye, Night

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nicole Krauss

  Lonely, Falling In Love, Distance

  4 Copy quote

• I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

  Nicole Krauss

  Thinking, Long, House

  4 Copy quote

• At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

  Nicole Krauss

  Book, Writing, White

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.9, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• That powers my desire to write: the sense of how quickly everything on the surface of life can be cut away and you can suddenly be inside the most inner part of the most inner life of a person. What does it feel like there, and what are the regrets and sensations and longings, and what is the music of it?

  Nicole Krauss

  Regret, Writing, Cutting

  4 Copy quote

• My first novel, 'Man Walks Into a Room,' is about a man who's lost his memory and has to start a second life. On one level, it's about how we create a coherent sense of self.

  Nicole Krauss

  Memories, Men, Self

  4 Copy quote

• I'm the opposite of someone like David Grossman, who knows how his characters walk, and how they smell. I don't allow myself to imagine what mine look like at all. My sense of them comes from the inside. They remain, by necessity, physically vague in my mind.

  Nicole Krauss

  Character, Smell, Opposites

  "Nicole Krauss: 'I take great pleasure in thinking'". Interview With Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• I walked down my snow covered street. Out of habit I turned and checked for my footsteps. When I arrived at my building I looked for my name on the buzzers. And because I know that sometimes I see things that aren't there, after dinner I called Information to ask if I was listed.(25)

  Nicole Krauss

  Names, Snow, Buzzers

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• I'm very interested in structure, how multiple stories are assembled in different ways; that is what memory does as well.

  Nicole Krauss

  Memories, Doe, Different

  4 Copy quote

• I used to think that if I had a choice between writing well and living well, I would choose the former. But now I think that's sheer lunacy. Writing weighs so much less, in the great cosmic equation, than living.

  Nicole Krauss

  Writing, Thinking, Choices

  4 Copy quote

• I am always coming up with architectural metaphors when I think about writing. But I think one of the things that draw us to literature is that it gives us this very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world - things connect.

  Nicole Krauss

  Writing, Thinking, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• ...our eyes locked in one of those looks that sometimes happen between strangers, when both wordlessly agree that reality contains sinkholes whose depths neither can ever hope to fathom.

  Nicole Krauss

  Eye, Reality, Depth

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House”, p.136, Penguin UK

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Nicole Krauss

  Notebook, Illustration, Littles

  9 Copy quote

• I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.

  Nicole Krauss

  Age, Bruises, Aging

  "Great House". Book by Nicole Krauss, October 12, 2010.

  12 Copy quote

• I’ve always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.

  Nicole Krauss

  Lakes, Light, Ice

  7 Copy quote

• ("Let's stand under a tree," she said. "Why?" "Because it's nicer." "Maybe you should sit on a chair, and I'll stand above you, like they always do with husbands and wives." "That's stupid." "Why's it stupid?" "Because we're not married." "Should we hold hands?" "We can't." "But why?" "Because, people will know." "Know what?" "About us." "So what if they know?" "It's better when it's a secret." "Why?" "So no one can take it from us.")

  Nicole Krauss

  Husband, Stupid, Hands

  "The History of Love". Book by Nicole Krauss, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Nicole Krauss

  Phones, Embarrassed, Died

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.255, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)

  Nicole Krauss

  Children, Grandma, Fate

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House”, p.65, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

Page 5 of 8

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin