The History of Love: A Novel

For picking a lock where I came from I was a thief, but here in America I was a professional.

Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

“Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”)

Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.

To lose you have to have had. Ah? So now you’re a stickler for details? Have, didn’t have! Listen to you! You made a profession out of losing. A champion loser you were. And yet. Where’s the proof you ever had her? Where’s the proof that she was yours to have?

I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.

I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn’t matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones. And because I accepted that what I’d once believed was possible was in fact impossible, and because I knew I would never show a word of it to anyone, I wrote a

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.