Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERIs that growing old? Or is it something worse?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERThis is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERBut 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 FOEROne hundred years of joy can be erased in one second.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERThe world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERWe 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 FOEREverything that’s born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they’re all on fire, and we’re all trapped.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember,
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERMy 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOEREverything else happened – why not the things that could have?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOEROf 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERShe 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER