Nicole Krauss Quotes

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.

Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off.

Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night.

You can't handle the truth!

You collapse a few times, and you put your head in your hands, and you say, "Oh my god, how am I gonna get through this?" You have a few of those nights, and then you get over it and you keep it moving. And those nights... As you get more used to the strain, I guess those nights are fewer and farther between. So that's the best you can hope for. It's a tough job and it's a lot to pull out of your brain.

I was not allowed to think of him. That was something I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was getting better, and so the pain was something I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade-off was the never-ending numbness. Between pain and nothing, I'd chosen nothing.

Trying to find comfort in perpetual discomfort has been my life's work.

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?

You can’t force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it

I think that in a general sense, the idea of getting comfortable with the truth in life is uncomfortable.

To fight aloud is very brave, but gallanter, I know, who charge within the bosom, the Cavalry of Woe.

I had to hold my head up high and put a bold face on things, but the thoughts keep coming anyways.

Anger punishes the bearer's heart. Who remains angry suffers most. For many, the search for perfection virtually guarantees it will be found, and disregarded in order to continue the search. Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

She could not trust herself to hope—but without hope, she realized, she had no reason to go on.

I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I've got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, "OK, let's make this day another good one." I hadn't noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.

The war came to me in my dreams and showed me its sole purpose: to go on, only to go on.

as the shadows assume shapes I fight the slow retreat now my once-promise dwindling dwindling now lighting new cigarettes pouring more drinks it has been a beautiful fight still is.

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.

Just keep going - no feeling is final.

Inside your own self pity there you swim, in sinking down to drown her voice still haunts you, and only with your laughter can you win.

People couldn't bear to go on living if they faced every cold truth about themselves.

Psychologically, I will not have to seek far if I decide to kill myself, because in my mind and heart I am more ready for this than for the unplanned daily tribulations that mark off the mornings and afternoons.

If you cannot accept an external event immediately, then some kind of resistance will come up. And there may be some external events you cannot accept at all.

Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.