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I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

Nicole Krauss

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Nicole Krauss
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: August 18
Author
Novelist
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Maybe
Truth
Always
Think
Arrived
Thinking
Late
Life
Wasn
Like
World
Ready

More quotes by Nicole Krauss

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Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.
Nicole Krauss
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I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even when I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded I'll even go so far as dropping change all over the floor, nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. All I want is not to die on a day I went unseen.
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. . . she gave him one of those broad smiles she reserved for strangers, as if she were aware of being able to pass, in their eyes, for an ordinary woman.
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I finally understood that no matter what I did, or who I found, I-he-none of us-would ever be able to win over the memories she had of Dad, memories that soothed her even while they made her sad, because she'd built a world out of them she knew how to survive on even if no one else could.
Nicole Krauss
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I read like an animal. I read under the covers, I read lying in the grass, I read at the dinner table. While other people were talking to me, I read.
Nicole Krauss
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To hike out alone in the desert to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.
Nicole Krauss
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Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was Queen and he was King. In the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls. When the sky grew dark they parted with leaves in their hair.
Nicole Krauss
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I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. We were locked in a stare of mutual disgust.
Nicole Krauss
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In nature forms are endlessly being destroyed and then recreated and destroyed and recreated. Nature isn't afraid to destroy forms in the process of regenerating. So why are we afraid of that in life?
Nicole Krauss
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All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist
Nicole Krauss
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I feel really strongly about not wanting to overly guide the reader about what he or she should think. I really trust the reader to know for themselves and not to need too much. You have your own imagination, your own experiences, your own feelings, and a novel wants ultimately to ask questions. It doesn't assert anything, or shouldn't, I think.
Nicole Krauss
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...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world!
Nicole Krauss
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When you're younger, it's all theoretical. It's all potential. As you get older, it becomes actual, and your life gets filled with unexpected complexity some of it asked for, and some of it not. It becomes richer, I find.
Nicole Krauss
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He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.
Nicole Krauss
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Sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits. The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. Without them, we'd be unidentifiable. We have to reinvent ourselves every minute.
Nicole Krauss
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When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.
Nicole Krauss
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I'm not immune to the readers' desires. Sometimes they are my own, because I'm a reader, too. The readers' desire to know what really happened and what didn't. To have a glimpse into what's really the author and what isn't. I think we all have that and I wonder about what it means.
Nicole Krauss
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Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.
Nicole Krauss
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There was no one to call me to bed, no one to demand that the rhythms of my life operate in a duet.
Nicole Krauss
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Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Nicole Krauss