Nicole Krauss

The soft down of your white hair lightly playing about your scalp like a half-blown dandelion. Many times, Bruno, I have been tempted to blow on your head and make a wish.

we never spoke of our childhoods, of the dreams we shared and lost, of everything that happened and didn't happen.

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

Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.

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 discovered and everything was possible.

A stick could be a sword. A pebble could be a diamond. A tree a castle

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.

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 they were ten he asked her to marry him. When they were eleven he kissed her for the first time. When they were thirteen they got into a fight and for three weeks they didn't talk. When they were fifteen she showed him the scar on her left breast. Their love was a secret they told no one.

He promised her he would never love another girl as long as he lived. What if I die? she asked. Even then, he said. For her sixteenth birthday he gave her an English dictionary and together they learned the words