The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERSilently 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.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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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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I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?
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He couldn’t bear to live, but he couldn’t bear to die. He couldn’t bear the thought of he making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn’t bear to keep it, but he couldn’t bear to destroy it either.
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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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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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When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.
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We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.
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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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It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all.
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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.
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Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
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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.
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She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.
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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