Efrain > Efrain's Quotes

“Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Wittgenstein once wrote that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. I wish I could draw you.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”
― Nicole Krauss

“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget...”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“...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 Krauss, The History of Love

“Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“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.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Eyes blurred, she drove away. Alone, buzzing down the asphalt trail to Kayenta, heart beating, her pistons leaping madly up and down, Bonnie Abbzug relapsed into the sweet luxury of tears. Hard to see the road. She turned on the windshield wipers but that didn't help much.”
― Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

“There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes things worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.”
― Nicole Krauss, Great House

“I don't think that most women have to prove that they're real women. You live long enough, you graduate to being real.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“People can't help what they feel. It's what they do that counts”
― Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

“Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Forgetting," I said, "is probably as much a part of life as remembering. We're all amnesiacs.”
― Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

“There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“She talked as if she were observing her own sentences...”
― Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

“As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“...I often thought of our marriage as one long conversation.”
― Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

“Oh”, he said. He was trying to smile, but it was a brave smile, a sickroom smile, and I was sorry I had caused it. I had apparently taken the wind out of his sails. His discouragement wasn’t a good sign. Men should stand up to me more than that. They have to fight back to satisfy me. They have to face me down.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“The smarter you are, the sexier you are.”
― Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

“we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“Infatuated people often look ridiculous to others; their nonstop cooing, touching, and kissing can be intolerable to friends who have left that stage behind them.”
― Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

“In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“Every day is a new day when filled with dawn feeling, a virgin day, until it gets fucked up by human activity and becomes history.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“I suppose most things in a person's life are good for a while, even if that doesn't last very long. Maybe that is why, even after something has gone wrong, we spend so much time trying to fix it. Because we remember when it wasn't broken.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love...”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina