Nicole Krauss
American writer.
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All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.
Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement.
When I got up again, I'd shed the only part of me that had ever thought I'd find words for even the smallest bit of life.
The little boy I watched throwing pebbles into the empty fountain [...] You could tell that he had too much wisdom for his age. Probably he believed that he wasn't made for this world. I wanted to say to him: If not you, who?
The words of our childhood became strangers to us- we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language. P.6
When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.
Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name.
Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I'm not older than the rain. It's been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling.
These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down.
Perhaps that is what it means to be a father- to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
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