“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.”
Work
<p>Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, <i>The History of Love</i> by bestselling author Nicole Krauss explores the lasting power of the written word and the lasting power of love. <p><b>'When I was born my mother named me after every girl in a book my father gave her called <i>The History of Love</i>. . . '</b> <p>Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. <p>Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . . <p>'Wonderfully affecting...brilliant, touching and remarkably poised' <i>Sunday Telegraph</i> <p>'A tender tribute to human valiance. Who could be unmoved by a cast of characters whose daily battles are etched on out mind in such diamond-cut prose?' <i>Independent on Sunday</i> <p>'Devastating...one of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one's breath away' <i>Spectator </i> <p>Nicole Krauss is an American bestselling author who has received international critical acclaim for her first three novels: <i>Great House</i> (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011), <i>The History of Love</i> and <i>Man Walks into a Room</i> (shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award), all of which are available in Penguin paperback.</p>
Quotes
Showing 1-15 of 15
Nicole Krauss
Canonical work source
“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.”
“Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling som...”
“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”
“She’s kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she’s turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex...”
“At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the...”
“That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.”
“In the days after my heart attack & before I began to write again, all I could think about was dying. I'd been spared again, and only after the danger had passed did I allow my thoughts to u...”
“there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.”
“We met each other when we were young, before we knew enough about disappointment, and once we did we found we reminded each other of it.”
“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.”
“The fear of death haunted me for a year. I cried whenever anyone dropped a glass or broke a picture. But even then that passed, I was left with a sadness that couldn't be rubbed off. It wasn...”
“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovere...”
“When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit”
“These things are lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone taking the time to write it all down. That Litvinoff had a wife who was so devoted is, to be...”
“So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushi...”