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 FOERI felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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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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With writing, we have second chances.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
My point is that there are a lot of forces, like the media and the general political rhetoric tells us we should have more. That we should do better than our parents and have a bigger house or a better car.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!
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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 -
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 -
I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
As long as I am thinking, I am alive.
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He couldn’t bear to live, but he couldn’t bear to die. He couldn’t bear the thought of he making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn’t bear to keep it, but he couldn’t bear to destroy it either.
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The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.
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.
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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?
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I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.
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Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
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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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER