Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes: 49

• Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

• I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.

• 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.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

• Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

• She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• 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!

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

• I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• 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

• The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• 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?

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• With writing, we have second chances.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

• He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• ...is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time......why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.

• I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

  Everything Is Illuminated

• Grandfather informs me that is not possible.

• Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying 'I don't want to die.' That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• ...people with nothing to declare carry the most.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• I said, 'I need to know how he died.'He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?'So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• She died in my arms, saying, "I don't want to die."That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

• ...and when is enough proof enough?

  Everything Is Illuminated

• Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

• Find a printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it. Imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid. (Broilers are never in cages, and never on multiple levels.) Now enclose the grid with windowless walls and put a ceiling on top. Run in automated (drug-laced) feed, water, heating, and ventilation systems. This is a farm.

  Eating Animals