An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand.
Nicole KraussI knew that to find and to feel Yoav again would be terribly painful, because of what had become of him, and because of what I knew he could ignite in me, a vitality that was excruciating because like a flare it lit up the emptiness inside me and exposed what I always secretly knew about myself: how much time I'd spent being only partly alive, and how easily I'd accepted a lesser life.
Nicole KraussThat powers my desire to write: the sense of how quickly everything on the surface of life can be cut away and you can suddenly be inside the most inner part of the most inner life of a person. What does it feel like there, and what are the regrets and sensations and longings, and what is the music of it?
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 KraussNow we'd known each other for two years, the side of my calf was touching his shins, and his stomach was against my ribs. He said, "I don't think it's end of world to be my girlfriend." I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.
Nicole Krauss