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I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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 wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Better Country Home Invention Live World
If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Camera Hunting Thrill
I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Believe Challenge Faith God Myself
The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Cruelty Observation Philosophy Place
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
When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Life Love Necessary Possible Yourself
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Difference Emotion Feeling Shame Shy Yourself
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!
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Leaving Let Go Life People Yourself
Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Head Shy Yourself
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
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Feeling Life Loud Music Myself Stranger
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
There are only some many times you can utter “It does not hurt” before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Beginning Hurt Time Yourself
I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Day Myself Wash
My life story is the story of everyone I’ve ever met.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Life Myself Story
We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Imposter Myself Recognition Share Smile Wrong
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Admire Book Feeling Reading Yourself
I was more alone than if I had been alone.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Alone Myself
I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Happiness Myself Thinking Time
As long as I am thinking, I am alive.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Alive Myself Thinking
Everything I did, I did because I thought it was the correct thing to do, I am not a hero, it is true, But I am not a bad person, either.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Bad Character Goodness Myself Person Unknown
Let love write on you for awhile.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Love Sex Writing Yourself
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Book Design Fascination Myself Poem Yourself
There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Understand Wrong Yourself
Not responding is a response–we are equally responsible for what we don’t do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Equality Fingers Respond Responsibility Throw Yourself
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

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

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I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

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