I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERIt made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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Only humans can cry tears.
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No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I’ll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse.
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It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.
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Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
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The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.
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Words never mean what we want them to mean.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.
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Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?
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Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.
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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.
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Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.
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It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
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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?
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I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.
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I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
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It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us…on the inside, looking out.
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I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.
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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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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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
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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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It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
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People with nothing to declare carry the most.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.
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The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable-the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER