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 FOERNot 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.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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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One of the greatest opportunities to live our values-or betray them-lies in the food we put on our plates.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Everything else happened – why not the things that could have?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
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 -
Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore — “I’m easy; I’ll eat anything” — can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.
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If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Words never mean what we want them to mean.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER