The Book for Winter Break

"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 are 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 onto a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretend to be doing the whole sky."

From The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss