Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERWhy didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
-
-
Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
We aren’t exactly emptying the oceans; it’s more like clear-cutting a forest with thousands of species to create massive fields with one type of soybean.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was having thoughts.
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 -
Why are you leaving me? He wrote, I do not know how to live. I do not know either but I am trying. I do not know how to try. There were some 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 -
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 -
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 -
She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee’s knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else
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 -
Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
People with nothing to declare carry the most.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER