One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI 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.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
-
-
It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can’t people say what they mean at the time?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
But I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.
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 -
I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
It’s the tragedy of loving, you can’t love anything more than something you miss.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don’t care if we’re lying. I am a bad person. I don’t care. I don’t care what you are.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
With writing, we have second chances.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER