The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

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.

After all, what does it mean for a man to hide one more thing when he has vanished completely?

Grammar of my life: as a rule of thumb, wherever there appears a plural, correct for singular.

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.

The Street of Crocodiles

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant.

At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that’s why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.

The truth is the thing I invented so I could live.

I thought, An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone’s hand, and the next thing that happened was we kissed each other, and I found I knew how, and I felt happy and sad in equal parts, because I knew that I was falling in love, but it wasn’t with him.

Sometimes I thought about nothing and sometimes I thought about my life. At least I made a living. What kind of living? A living. I lived. It wasn’t easy. And yet. I found out how little is unbearable.