She’s kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she’s turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. 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. .Nicole Krauss
About This Quote
Every time we fall our strength comes from the way we rise from those ashes. Our strength is in the way we pick ourselves up and decide to go on. When we think that everything is over, we should remember that there is still a chance for a new beginning. She has loved my father as much as she can, through all of their ups and downs, and she has used her love to keep life going. If you’re going to give up on someone or something, make sure it’s worth the sacrifice.
Source: The History Of Love
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