My point is that there are a lot of forces, like the media and the general political rhetoric tells us we should have more. That we should do better than our parents and have a bigger house or a better car.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI 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.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
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She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.
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We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.
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Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
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I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
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Everything else happened – why not the things that could have?
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Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.
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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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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.
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Of course food has an important cultural use in families, but there are things that have more important cultural uses in families, and broadening the conversation out simply from what’s reasonable also allows in other things.
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I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
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She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.
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Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
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The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.
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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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There are only some many times you can utter “It does not hurt” before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.
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We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?
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What does it remember like?
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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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I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?
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It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
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 -
I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.
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One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
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We spent our lives making livings.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER