To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like. Nicole Krauss More Quotes by Nicole Krauss More Quotes From Nicole Krauss 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 smell opposites character No, I don't harbor any mystical ideas about writing, Your Honor, it's work like any other kind of craft; the power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is. Nicole Krauss writing lying ideas David Grossman may be the most gifted writer I've ever read. [To the End of the Land is] powerful, shattering, and unflinching. To read it is to have yourself taken apart, undone, touched at the place of your own essence. Nicole Krauss powerful land taken That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox. Nicole Krauss writing sometimes watches Because of the illusion. You fall in love, it's intoxicating, and for a little while, you actually feel like you've become one with the other person, merged souls and so on. You think you'll never be lonely again. Nicole Krauss falling-in-love lonely thinking 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." Nicole Krauss stars sky night 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. Nicole Krauss couple heart writing Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been Nicole Krauss has-beens space After all who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of their loneliness Nicole Krauss history-of-love loneliness wish I won't waste your time with the injuries of my childhood, with my loneliness, or the fear and sadness of the years I spent inside my parents' marriage, under the reign of my father's rage, afer all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of childhood? Nicole Krauss sadness loneliness father It's strange what the heart can do when the mind is giving the directions. Nicole Krauss mind heart giving There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead. Nicole Krauss one-way alive way We move through the day like two hands of a clock: sometimes we overlap for a moment, then come apart again, carrying on alone. Everyday exactly the same: the tea, the burnt toast, the crumbs, the silence. Nicole Krauss two hands moving I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. We were locked in a stare of mutual disgust. Nicole Krauss disgusting staring world 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. Nicole Krauss eye sleep doors 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 choices writing thinking 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 giving thinking 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. Nicole Krauss asking forever goodbye Better to try and fail than not to try at all Nicole Krauss failing trying There's no match for the silence of GOD. Nicole Krauss silence
