...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world! Nicole Krauss More Quotes by Nicole Krauss More Quotes From Nicole Krauss 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 nicemouthswould-be 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 Nicole Krauss surpriseparentworld 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 madnessusemother There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not true. One learns to control and suppress it. But it doesn't lessen. It simply hides and concentrates itself in more discreet places. When one accidentally stumbles into one of these abysses, the pain is spectacular. Nicole Krauss painemotionpowerful I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life. Nicole Krauss too-latelifethinking 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. Nicole Krauss painmotherchildren I think in the whole field of questions about what we take to be "real," one of those questions is about the self. When you talk about the self we're always talking about whether it's a construction and it's a construction we're always in the process of working on. I don't think that work ever ends, to some degree. Nicole Krauss being-realrealthinking I feel really strongly about not wanting to overly guide the reader about what he or she should think. I really trust the reader to know for themselves and not to need too much. You have your own imagination, your own experiences, your own feelings, and a novel wants ultimately to ask questions. It doesn't assert anything, or shouldn't, I think. Nicole Krauss imaginationfeelingsthinking 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 silencelongneeds ...after all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of childhood? Nicole Krauss domestic-violencechildhoodsurvivor . . . I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you. Nicole Krauss parentmeanchildren Perhaps that is what it means to be a father - to teach your child to live without you. Nicole Krauss meanfatherchildren Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you. Nicole Krauss history-of-loveglasseslove-you Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about. Nicole Krauss misunderstoodwritinggiving ...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 deptheyereality The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. Nicole Krauss momentsfacesdoors At first Babel longed for the use of just two words: Yes and No. But he knew that just to utter a single word would be to destroy the delicate fluency of silence. Nicole Krauss silencewould-betwo The more freedom I allow myself as a writer to wander, become lost and go into uncertain territory - and I am always trying to go to the more awkward place, the more difficult place - the more frightening it is, because I have no plan. Nicole Krauss always-tryingawkwardterritory There were many things they simply didn't talk about: between them, silence was not so much a form of evasion as a way for solitary people to exist in a family. Nicole Krauss silencepeopleway I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without. Nicole Krauss bruisesagingage
