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Nicole Krauss

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Famous Nicole Krauss Quotes

“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.”

IfsWantFeelsMadeIdeasFeelingsLightEffortSurfaceIceLakesChairsPotThreatenedFrozenLampsUneasyDomestic LifeFrozen Lake
Author:Nicole Krauss
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“Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.”

ChildrenEndsMatterPainMovingMotherChanceFireViolenceCarHorrorProtectIllusionRainTrainStrangerNightmareAbyssDepravityVigilantWrong Direction
Book:Great House: A Novel
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“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.”

PeoplePastLeftGivenFeltDarkStreetsLonelinessLibraryForgottenEnvyDustAbandonedBrutalHollowCrossingsUnnoticedSidewalkCrossing The Street
Book:The History of Love: A Novel
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“Sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. 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.”

IfsGivingFirstsSometimesWholeFeelingsSeemsMightCertainUniverseRealizingChanceSacrificeSkyFiguresLike YouGiving UpPaintLandscapeQuartersInchesLeafsHolding OnLimiting YourselfHistory Of Love
Author:Nicole Krauss
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“He held my hand and told me a story about when he was six and threw a rock at a kid's head who was bullying his brother, and how after that no one had bothered either of them again. 'You have to stick up for yourself,' he told me. 'But it's bad to throw rocks,' I said. 'I know. You're smarter than me. You'll find something better than rocks.”

KnowsSaidStoriesHandsKidsRocksBrotherSixSticksBullyingSmarterBotheredSomething Better
Book:The History of Love: A Novel
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“Once upon a time you were a fish. How do you know? Because I was also a fish. You, too? Sure. A long time ago. Anyway, being a fish, you knew how to swim. You were a great swimmer. A champion swimmer, you were. You loved the water. Why? What do you mean, why? Why did I love the water? Because it was your life! And as we talked, I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you.”

KnowsMeanChildrenLongFatherWaterRealizingTeachLong TimeFingersFishesYour ChildrenChampionSwimDo You KnowFloatingLong Time AgoWithout YouOnce Upon A TimeSwimmerLet Him Go
Author:Nicole Krauss
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“To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.”

KnowsWorldFeelsHas BeensEyeNamesLostSpaceGoneShapesSightConstantAbsence
Book:Man Walks Into a Room
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“Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it.”

WorldMaySometimesFactsFeelingsSeemsOrderRoomsEmptyDrinkingWanderTeaKitchenOverwhelmingWakingConsistentlyBlanket
Book:Great House: A Novel
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“A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.”

IfsWritingYearsHeartMatterWould BeFoundGivenDifferencesImpossibleMonthsCoupleMy HeartSevenFiftySeven YearsHeart Attack
Book:The History of Love: A Novel
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“You’re lost in your own world, in the things that happen there, and you’ve locked all the doors. Sometimes I look at you sleeping. I wake up and look at you and I feel closer to you when you’re like that, unguarded, than when you’re awake. When you’re awake you’re like someone with her eyes closed, watching a movie on the inside of your eyelids. I can’t reach you anymore. Once upon a time I could, but not now, and not for a long time.”

WorldFeelsLooksLongI CanSometimesHappensEyeLostSleepDoorsLong TimeWake UpAwakeLockedHer EyesOnce Upon A TimeEyelids
Author:Nicole Krauss
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