The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERFood 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.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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Worthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder.
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In truth I was manufacturing a brick wall of shits.
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Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
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I was of the opinion that the past is past, and like all that is not now it should remain buried along the side of our memories.
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What does it remember like?
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And she would say, “Today you believe in God?” And he would say, “Today I believe in love”.
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Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.
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She extended a hand that I didn’t know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.
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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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Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.
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Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.
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I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
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A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
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There were 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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Art can be very political but that can’t be the purpose of art, it can’t be the driving force. It isn’t with any of the books that I love, anyway.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER