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 FOERWhy does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
-
-
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
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 -
No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I’ll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
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 -
Let love write on you for awhile.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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.
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER