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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

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
The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It’s already happening.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Factory People Reality See Willing
Let love write on you for awhile.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Love Sex Writing Yourself
Isn’t it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we’re doing what we’re doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Children Food Growth Ourselves People Strange Upset
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Cat Dog Farm Illegal Practice Treat Way
Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Change Expose Live Respond Silence
Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Aware Direction Life Live Miss Move Oneself Opportunity
This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Absence Hate Himself Love Presence
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

Believe Complication Myself Simplicity
My life story is the story of everyone I’ve ever met.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Life Myself Story
The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Leave Meaning Myself River Start Thinking Tree
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

Day Distance Fill Memories Reach Time Walk Yourself
Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Adult Cry Deserve Development Function Home Ourselves People World
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

Believe Future Greatness Learning Time Treat
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Happiness Philosophy Protect Sadness Yourself
Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Laughter Myself Room Small
I didn’t feel empty. I wished I’d felt empty. … I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Empty Feeling Myself Stone
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
Everything 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 FOER

Born Death Fire Live Ourselves Rise Smoking
He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Children Deep Family Father Lying Myself Parents Promise
Only humans can cry tears.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Cry Human Tears
Everything else happened – why not the things that could have?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Destiny Fate Life
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
And she would say, “Today you believe in God?” And he would say, “Today I believe in love”.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Believe God Love Myself
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
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

Empty Exact Forest Ocean Oneself Type
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

Appreciation Division Genius Infinte Sadness Separate

There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.

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There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.

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Popular Authors

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