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 KraussTags: childhood the-history-of-love nicole-krauss
Maybe Grodzenski was showing me, with his quiet pride, the reason he hummed a little while he worked.
Nicole KraussTags: pride
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 KraussShe [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos.
Nicole KraussTags: motherhood
Why is it, he asked, that wherever a Chilean goes in the world, Neruda and his fucking seashells has already been there and set up a monopoly? He held my gaze waiting for me to counter him, and as he did I got the feeling that where he came from it was commonplace to talk as we were talking, an even to argue about poetry to the point of violence, and for a moment I felt brushed by loneliness.
Nicole KraussBy heart, this is not an expression I use lightly. My heart is weak and unreliable.
Nicole KraussOnce, at the peak of our shouting, Bird took a deep breath. At the top
of his lungs, he shrieked: “I! HAVE NOT! BEEN! UNHAPPY! MY WHOLE! LIFE!” “But
you’re only seven,” I said.
Era uma vez um rapaz. Vivia numa aldeia que já não existe, numa casa que já não existe, na orla de um campo que já não existe, lugar de todas as descobertas e onde tudo era possível. Um pau podia ser uma espada. Uma pedra podia ser um diamante. Uma árvore um castelo.
Era uma vez um rapaz que vivia numa casa do outro lado do campo onde vivia uma rapariga que já não existe. Inventavam mil jogos. Ela era a Rainha e ele o Rei. Na luz do Outono, o cabelo dela brilhava como uma coroa. Bebiam o mundo em pequenas mãos-cheias. Quando o céu escurecia, apartavam-se com folhas nos cabelos.
Tags: love
Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end.
Darkness fell. Rain fell.
I never asked: What question?
And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, in the spring of 1938, on a rainy day that gave way to a break in the clouds, I lost you. You'd gone out to collect specimens for a theory you were hatching about rainfall, instinct, and butterflies. And then you were gone. We found you lying under a tree, your face splashed with mud. We knew you were free then, unbound by disappointing results. And we buried you in the cemetery where your father was buried, and his father, under the shade of the chestnut tree. Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. "Go," she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came.
Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fitzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh—someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind?
Tags: holocaust
. . . 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 KraussTags: parenthood
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