Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERThe hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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But I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.
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I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.
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Why are you leaving me? He wrote, I do not know how to live. I do not know either but I am trying. I do not know how to try. There were some things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So i buried them and let them hurt me
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There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.
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Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
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I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all.
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It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
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I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.
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I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.
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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.
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Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.
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Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.
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It’s so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won’t be awake for another five hours, but I can’t help feeling that we’re sharing this clear and beautiful morning.
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One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
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Let love write on you for awhile.
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This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
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I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.
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I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.
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Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It’s almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.
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In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations.
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The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.
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We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?
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Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.
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There are still many different ways to get stuck, existentially stuck. Feeling like, “This is worthless. I’m wasting my time, and I would be wasting the time of someone who tried to read this.” It happens all the time.
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I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER