So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the fleeting nature of words and thoughts, emphasizing how they can easily be forgotten or ignored.
Nicole Krauss's quote highlights the ephemeral quality of words and expressions that, despite their potential importance, often fade away without impact. It suggests a deep sense of loss for the thoughts that are never shared or acknowledged, comparing them to dead leaves discarded by the wind. This imagery evokes a melancholic realization about the transient nature of both communication and introspection.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of expressing oneself, one might use this quote to illustrate how unspoken words can fade away.
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.
Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing.Whatever that is just do the next thing.God will meet you there.
Life, with all it's sorrows, cares, perplexities and heart-breaks, is more interesting than bovine placidity, hence more desirable. The more interesting it is, the happier it is.
Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.
Life is a game, play it... Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
I want every day to be life for the living, not just traipsing through it existing. I'm just interested in life and the world and exploring.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
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