Nicole Krauss Quotes

Two things scare me. The first is getting hurt. But that's not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.

I feel I am a child that's lost its mother. I feel like a calf whose mother has gone off to slaughter.

I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.

There's horror in your life, believe me, whether it's coming, or you've just been lucky to miss it today.

Valor is of no service, chance rules all, and the bravest often fall by the hands of cowards.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends

Wars are detested by mothers.

Once you know how completely and suddenly the earth can open up at your feet and the worst can happen, it also, paradoxically, leaves you more afraid of everything else.

The scariest thing I ever did was give birth in the kitchen by myself, with my three-year-old bashing me on the head with a sword, but it's not like you have a choice is it.

There is hurt that cannot be fixed by band aids or poetrybecause no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.

it's impossible to conquer all fear and loss by preparation. There are always sources of desolation that aren't taken into account because no one knows what they will be.

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.

Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.' Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

The worst part about loving someone, Merripen, is that there will al­ways be things you can't protect her from. Things be­yond your control. You finally realize there is something worse than dying . . . and that is having something hap­pen to her. You have to live with that fear always. But you have to take the bad part, if you want the good part." Kev looked at him bleakly. "What's the good part?" A smile touched Cam's lips. "All the rest of it is the good part," he said, and went.

My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

Everything had felt so precarious since her mother's death, like she was walking on a bridge made of paper.

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks. The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter. Like the smile of a child separated from his mother’s milk for the very first time. --from poem Blood and Blossoms

There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.

I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children between friends family things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost more easily than anyone could imagine.

It is you men who make war! ... We, who have children, would never make it! Why should a woman be broken up in pain, to give her child life, only to see him carried away from her, to make food for guns?