Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?

And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?

I think after you live it's like before you lived.

We are being very nomadic with the truth, yes?

Grandfather kicked the stop pedal, and my face gave a high-five to the front window.

There has yet to be a human to survive a span of history without at least one end of the world.

He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.

For how long could we fail until we surrendered?

The paper, the stapler, the staples, the tape. It makes me sick. Physical things. Forty years of loving someone becomes staples and tape.

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

The world is a big place," he said, "but so is the inside of an apartment!

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.

...accepting the compromise of the way we have been, the way we are, and the way we will likely be...may we live together in unwavering love and good health, amen.

[She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

Chickens can do many things, but they cannot make sophisticated deals with humans.

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.

I realized I was on a something island. 'How did I get here,' I wondered, surrounded by Nothing, "and how can I get back?

Was his death an essential stage in the continuation of his life?

Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the Earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore?

She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.

I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.

She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.

Everything I did, I did because I thought it was the correct thing to do… I am not a hero, it is true… But I am not a bad person, either.

Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.

I am willing to be annoying if that's what was necessary.

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

I'd lost count of the disappointments.

I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.

We eat as sons and daughters, as families, as communities, as generations, as nations, and increasingly as a globe. We can't stop our eating from radiating influence even if we want to.

Isn't it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?

Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

I wanted to touch him, to tell him that even if everyone left everyone, I would never leave him, he talked and talked, his words fell through him, trying to find the floor to his sadness.

I said, 'I need to know how he died.' He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?' So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.

There is nothing wrong with compromising. Even if you compromise almost everything.

It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?

The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.

I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist.

Your dad didn't die, so I won't be able to explain it to you.

Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!

What if I never stop inventing?

Do you have any coffee?'...'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.

I desperately wish I had my tambourine with me now, because even after everything I'm still wearing heavy boots, and sometimes it helps to play a good beat

Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.

These little daily choices that we're so used to thinking are irrelevant are the most important thing we do all day long.

To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.

We've made science experiments of ourselves and our children.