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

Categorized in : Night Sleep Moon

I take almost no notes when I write. I have one notebook - this old green leather notebook that my dad gave me a decade ago.

notebook dad writing

I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.

fictional-stories important reality

To walk into a modern-day bookstore is a little bit like studying a single photograph out of the infinite number of photographs that cold be taken of the world: It offers the reader a frame.

bookstores taken numbers

I wished to punish her for her intolerable stoicism, which made it impossible for me to ever be truly needed by her in the most profound ways a person can need another, a need that often goes by the name of love.

names profound needs

Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to... by Nicole Krauss

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

together hands way

...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world! by Nicole Krauss

...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world!

language world

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

sad love two

After she left everything fell apart. No Jew was safe. There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn't fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late. p 8

rumor choices believe

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.

arms mom needs

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

eye beautiful hands

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

glasses love-you years

I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.

finals lasts moments

Bruno, my old faithful. I haven't sufficiently described him. Is it enough to say he is indescribable? No. Better to try and fail than not to try at all.

faithful failing trying

That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,' Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone.

good-day simple thinking

Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.

morning book son

When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.

different ocean feelings

Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, and distant. once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photographs.

memories father years

Without memories to cloud it, the mind perceives with absolute clarity. Each observation stands out in stark relief. In the beginning, when there's not yet a smudge, the slate still blank, there is only the present moment: each vital detail, shocked color, the fall of light. Like film stills. The mind relentlessly open to the world, deeply impressed, even hurt by it: not yet gauzed by memory.

hurt memories fall

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.

cameras remember way

... as a rule of thumb, whenever there appears a plural, correct for a singular. Should I ever let slip a royal WE, put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.

royal thumbs blow