Nicole Krauss Quotes

Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.

Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes; but beneath the statues there's no love, no love beneath the eyes set in crystal. Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst, in the tiny hut struggling against the flood; love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle, in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls, and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.

Some people out there don't have life.

Over the hill to the poor-house I'm trudgin' my weary way.

Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.

I know that my life is going to be hell from here on.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

It's not been a pleasant life.

We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.

I think it is really sad that when people lose their homes they kind of lose their minds too.

Life is really hard for some people.

Life is hard and it gets worse and worse and worse.

The miseries of the Indonesian people are sandwiched between two thick slabs of bread—one the bread of hope, the other the bread of patience

Life is hard. Not great. Kind of tragic.

I don't just live in a bubble in Los Angeles. I'm on the road all the time. I say hello to people everywhere. That way, you get to see what despair is around the holidays. People are making terrible choices: Do I have heat in the winter or food on the table? Decisions between filling the gas tank or buying a gift for a kid.

I knew when I left school, my stomach would probably hurt from having nothing to eat, and I would be going back to those same circumstances that were breaking me.

I had a very hard life in Kazakhstan.

There was a time when I had nothing. I lost everything.

I know what it is to have nothing.

I've suffered through the worst possible conditions.

Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears.

Poverty snatches the reins out of the hand of piety.

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes that something is going to happen - if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; if not in this life then in the next life.