At the most simplistic level physicists tell us that what we see as reality is not actually accurate. A rock looks solid to us but it's full of empty space and atoms moving and we see it as solid because we need to because it helps us survive, right? Survival being our goal. You can extrapolate that to many other things.
Nicole KraussAt first Babel longed for the use of just two words: Yes and No. But he knew that just to utter a single word would be to destroy the delicate fluency of silence.
Nicole KraussI think in the whole field of questions about what we take to be "real," one of those questions is about the self. When you talk about the self we're always talking about whether it's a construction and it's a construction we're always in the process of working on. I don't think that work ever ends, to some degree.
Nicole KraussOnce upon a time you were a fish. How do you know? Because I was also a fish. You, too? Sure. A long time ago. Anyway, being a fish, you knew how to swim. You were a great swimmer. A champion swimmer, you were. You loved the water. Why? What do you mean, why? Why did I love the water? Because it was your life! And as we talked, I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you.
Nicole KraussDonโt you see?โ I said. โHe could change every detail, but he couldnโt change her.โ โBut why?โ His obtuseness frustrated me. โBecause he was in love with her!โ I said. โBecause, to him, she was the only thing that was real.
Nicole KraussAnd he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)
Nicole Krauss