Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERShe wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee’s knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.
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My life story is the story of everyone I’ve ever met.
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We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.
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The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.
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Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean].
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Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.
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I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, becuase I did. It’s that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don’t know how I could have tried harder.
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The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.
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Everything else happened – why not the things that could have?
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Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
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We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.
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If I’d been someone else in a different world I’d’ve done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.
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She said, “Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don’t need?” I said, “It depends on what it means to need.
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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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Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore — “I’m easy; I’ll eat anything” — can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER