I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.
Nicole KraussOne of us had loved the other more perfectly, had watched the other more closely, and one of us listened and the other hadnโt, and one of us held on to the ambition of the one idea far longer than was reasonable, whereas the other, passing a garbage can one night, had casually thrown it away.
Nicole KraussBut loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love...Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others.
Nicole KraussI have a very strong sense of architecture in my novels. But at first it's sometimes like building a doorknob before you have a door, and a door before you have a room.
Nicole KraussBecause 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 KraussYouโre lost in your own world, in the things that happen there, and youโve locked all the doors. Sometimes I look at you sleeping. I wake up and look at you and I feel closer to you when youโre like that, unguarded, than when youโre awake. When youโre awake youโre like someone with her eyes closed, watching a movie on the inside of your eyelids. I canโt reach you anymore. Once upon a time I could, but not now, and not for a long time.
Nicole Krauss