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Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes - Page 16

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The Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, and the Jewshave four hundred for schmuck.

The Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, and the Jewshave four hundred for schmuck.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Snow, Four, Hundred

The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Being Sad, Knows, Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

... the man took my passport and asked me the purpose of my visit, I wrote in my daybook, 'To mourn,' and then, 'To try to live,' he gave me a look and asked if I would consider that business or pleasure, I wrote, 'Neither.' 'For how long do you plan to mourn and try to live?' I wrote, 'For the rest of my life.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Men, Long, Trying

The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Past, Infinite, Paralyzed
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.264, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Falling In Love, Art, Book

I think after you live it's like before you lived.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Thinking

We cracked up together, which was necessary, because she loved me again.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Together, Cracked
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.170, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Sleep, Noise, Pretending

Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Children, Teaching, Community

We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often at the center of our plates. This doesn't require that we pretend we are going to have a collective agreement. However strong our intuitions are about what's right for us personally and even about what's right for others, we all know in advance that our positions will clash with those of our neighbors. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Strong, Reality, Animal
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2010.

The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Editing, Self
"Foer play" by Clark Collis, www.theguardian.com. June 1, 2002.

Profound, bottomless self-doubt - it has no value - what's the point? In a way, it takes up as much time as anything else.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Self, Profound, Doubt

But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Figures, Found, Understood

I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Evil, Next, Saws
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.248, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Her life was a slow realization that the world was not for her and that for whatever reason she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. table ivory elephant charm rainbow onion hairdo violence melodrama honey...None of it moved her. She addressed the world honestly searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her but to each she would have to say I don't love you.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Love You, Elephants, Ivory

Only a few months into our marriage," writes the grandfather, "we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Grandfather, Would Be

We laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Thinking, Our World, Together
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Reality Hunger is more than thought-provoking; it's one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Beautiful, Book, Reality

We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Hero, Long, Effort

She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.' 'You don't do that anymore?' 'There are questions I don't ask anymore.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Believe, Mean, Thinking
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Hate, Mean, I Hate
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You can see the most beautiful things from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I read somewhere that people on the street are supposed to look like ants, but that's not true. They look like little people. And the cars look like little cars. And even the buildings look little. It's like New York is a miniature replica of New York, which is nice, because you can see what it's really like, instead of how it feels when you're in the middle of it.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Beautiful, New York, Nice
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.245, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The disgraced Usurer Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening... He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the oven, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside... When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint... Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Girl, Baby, Fall

Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Atheist, Mean, Reason
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Cities, People, Pockets
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.74, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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