Nicole KraussThinkers

Literature is a form which provides us with the very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world and that things connect.

Marriage is moving through the day like two hands of a clock: sometimes overlaping for a moment, then coming apart again, carrying on alone. Everyday exactly the same: the tea, the burnt toast, the crumbs, the silence.

Motherhood is to live in the illusion that a mother can protect her child. She cannot; not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.

Novel writing is the work of uncovering the symmetries or connections that make it whole, which might not reveal itself at first.

Symmetry is a thing wherein we take comfort when we find them in life because they suggest a design where there is none.