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.
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
-
-
Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn’t see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
She extended a hand that I didn’t know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Only humans can cry tears.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Most of the times that I think about my relationship to Judaism, I not only accuse myself of a shallowness, but I feel certain that there’s a shallowness there. That’s not a bad thing, really.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn’t matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER