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?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!
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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?
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I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.
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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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I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.
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She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.
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I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all.
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When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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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My life story is the story of everyone I’ve ever met.
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I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
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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
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Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It’s almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.
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We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.
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Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.
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The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.
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And she would say, “Today you believe in God?” And he would say, “Today I believe in love”.
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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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He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.
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I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
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So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!
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I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster’s paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.
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There are still many different ways to get stuck, existentially stuck. Feeling like, “This is worthless. I’m wasting my time, and I would be wasting the time of someone who tried to read this.” It happens all the time.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER