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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.

Jonathan Safran Foer

While it is always possible to wake a person who’s sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Asleep Person Possible Sleep Wake Willing
Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Family Food Herself Offering Terror Tree
She extended a hand that I didn’t know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Break Fingers Hands Herself Silence
Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Change Choice Community Conscience Family Farm Local Nation Ourselves Word
I never confused what I had with what I was.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Confusion Myself
I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Beginning Deserve Detail Friendship Leaving Myself Relationship Talk Yourself
Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Feeling Fiction Reading Strong Work
It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Complete Empty Feeling Myself Need
Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hand Myself Time Training
Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Aware Direction Life Live Miss Move Oneself Opportunity
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?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Absence Hate Himself Love Presence
I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Excellence Life Limitation Thinking
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Believe Complication Myself Simplicity
Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hear Return Time Yourself
Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Change Expose Live Respond Silence
We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don’t care if we’re lying. I am a bad person. I don’t care. I don’t care what you are.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Bad Each Other Lying Yourself

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 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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