The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference.

They collected the world in small handfuls.

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.

When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?

Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.

“You got a little happier and also a little sadder.” “Meaning they cancel each other out, leaving me exactly the same.” “Not at all. The fact that you got a little happier today doesn’t change the fact that you also became a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you’re the happiest and the saddest you’ve ever been in your whole life.”

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.