Nicole Krauss Quotes

The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.

The more enchanted the idyll, greater must be the pain of its ending.

I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true

every time I've held a rose, It seems I only felt the thorns

Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak

You never forget your first love.

More dreams are destroyed in bed than are ever found there.

I love you', though, were three words she had often heard during her twenty-two years, and it seemed to her that they were now completely devoid of meaning, because they had never turned into anything serious or deep, never translated into a lasting relationship.

The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.

My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?

One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.

Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found―and then lost―so many things in Paris.

One reason why love songs are better than love itself is that you can replay them.

Some people are better imagined in one's bed than found there in the morning.

I have a beautiful address book a friend gave me in 1966. I literally cannot open it again. Ever. It sits on the shelf with over a hundred names crossed out. What is there to say? There are no words. I'll never understand why it happened to us.

A woman findeth in her last lover much of her first love; but a man seeth his next-to-the-last love, alway.

Suppose there aren't any more A + days once you get to be twelve? Wouldn't that be something! To spend the rest of your life looking for an A + day and not finding it.

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline crack.

...the moron who thought love was forever.

These things end,” she said. “They always end. Nobody marries their first love. First love is just that. First. It’s implied that something else will follow.

Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.

You're sad-looking," she said. "My grandson used to be such a happy boy. He used to write me stories. I remember the first story he ever wrote me, 'Once upon a time, there was a boy.' And that became 'Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to fly.' And they kept getting better and better over time. I never found out if the boy got to fly." I gave her a small smile. If only she knew the boy's wings had been clipped.

What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?

Sometimes when you're young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you're living on someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been. Then we grow up and our hearts break into two.