Nicole Krauss Quotes

Less is always more. The best language is silence. We live in a time of a terrible inflation of words, and it is worse than the inflation of money.

If you can't pronounce a word correctly, just don't use it.

I am so afraid of people's words.They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.

What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.

Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark.

Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words.

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.

Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.

Explain nothing. Put it there. Say it. Leave.

A true test of friendship, to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence , without wearying of one another's company.

Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

The less you talk, the more time you have for the essential things.

Usually they are quick to discover that I cannot see or hear.... It is not training but love which impels them to break their silence about me with the thud of a tail rippling against my chair on gambols round the study, or news conveyed by expressive ear, nose, and paw. Often I yearn to give them speech, their motions are so eloquent with things they cannot say.

Sometimes words are not enough.

I prefer the wisdom of the uneducated to the folly of the loquacious.

We didn't talk much. But we didn't need to.

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.

The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!

There is a loving way with words and an unloving way. And it is only with the loving way that the simplicity of language becomes beautiful.

Don't talk too much. Don't pop off. Don't talk after the game until you cool off.

True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.

I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.