And it's like some tiny nothing that sets off a natural disaster halfway across the world, only this was the opposite of disaster, how by accident she saved me with that thoughtless act of grace, and she never knew, and how that, too, is the part of the history of love.
Interpretation
A small act of kindness can have a profound impact on someone's life.
In this quote, Nicole Krauss suggests that even the smallest, seemingly insignificant actions can create significant positive change in someone's life, akin to how a minor event can trigger a major natural disaster. The quote reflects on the unknowable ways in which love and grace can influence our experiences and connections with others, illustrating that acts of kindness, even if unrecognized by the giver, contribute to the larger tapestry of love's narrative.
In practice
During a speech about kindness in a community event.
To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.
For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love.
Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - 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.
I’ve always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.
When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.
Herman slipped his hand into mine, and 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.
When He tells us to love our enemies He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.
So they loved as love in twain Had the essence but in one; Two distinct, divisions none.
One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.
In antiquity, a woman might be an object of worship or desire, but never of love.
I felt like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.