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Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Bone Hear Live Myself Time Weight
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

Food Help Honey Nourish Ourselves Purpose Remember Serve Tears
Every moment before this one depends on this one.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Depend Moments Oneself
I wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Better Country Home Invention Live World
Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hear Return Time Yourself
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

Breathe Father Process Tree Understand Young
I’m so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Afraid Lose Love Myself Refusal
Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Feeling Fiction Reading Strong Work
People with nothing to declare carry the most.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Carry Declare People Talk
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Each Other Talk Way Word
I am sure people tell you this constantly but if you looked up ‘incredibly beautiful’ in the dictionary there would be a picture of you.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Dictionary People Photograph Yourself
Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Goodness Hope People Time Yourself
I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Day Myself Wash
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

Different Myself Silence World
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Appearance Himself Night Sleep Steal
It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hard Live Person Place Travel
I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Missing Myself Sorry Wonder
I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Day Experience Hope Love Understand Willing Yourself
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

Decision Eat Goodness Literature Suffering Taste Yourself
I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love steak. But there is a limit to my love.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Food Limitation Love Myself
The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hard Ideas Important Remember Writing
Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Fill Memories Time
I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Arrangement Myself Question World
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

Difference Emotion Feeling Shame Shy Yourself
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

Heart Intimate Myself Often Present Rich Save Technology Time
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Irony Time
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

Person Understand Whisper Yourself

Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.

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Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.

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