In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you’ve lost, what can you say about that?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERIt broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can’t people say what they mean at the time?
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
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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.
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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.
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It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?
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We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.
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Only humans can cry tears.
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Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.
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Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.
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My 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.
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Worthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder.
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Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they’re nothing.” “So what’s something?” “Being reliable is something. Being good.
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I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.
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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 -
You do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter,” I told her, and she said, “Then I would never utter another word again.” “You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.” “Then I would never do anything again.
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I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
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Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.
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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 -
Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
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She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.
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Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean].
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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
This 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.
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The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.
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 -
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