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Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes - Page 18

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Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat.

Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Technology, Retreat, Celebrate

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Two, Tragedy, Shame
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And the joys I've felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It as too big for me an would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler make that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. IF I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice

Jonathan Safran Foer
Giving, Joy, Grandfather

I knew that our time together was almost over, I asked her if she liked sports, she asked me if I liked chess, I asked her if she liked fallen trees, she went home with her father, the center of me followed her, but I was left with the shell of me, I needed to see her again, I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need, there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Beautiful, Sports, Father
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.113, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.

Jonathan Safran Foer
People, Shame, Feels
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.245, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I know you look both ways before you cross the street, but I want you to look both ways a second time, because I told you to.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Looks, Want, Way
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Be the instrument playing the sound of your life's passing

Jonathan Safran Foer
Fearless, Sound, Passing

For a long time, I thought I would like to be a doctor. Such a good profession. So explicitly good. Never a waste of time.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Doctors, Long, Waste
“Jonathan Safran Foer” by Jennifer L. Knox, www.newyorker.com. June 14 & 21, 2010.

Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Smart, Loneliness, Writing

Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Sadness, Frustration, Unique
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Animal, Suffering, Modern
Jonathan Safran Foer (2010). “Eating Animals”, p.134, Penguin UK

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Taste, Ethical, Animal Experimentation
Jonathan Safran Foer (2010). “Eating Animals”, p.78, Penguin UK

This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Strong, Crazy, Animal

SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Life, Smart, Book
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Book, Ideas

Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Mean, Animal, Talking
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, November 2, 2009.

Why are entire flocks of industrial birds dying at once? And what about the people eating those birds? Just the other day, one of the local pediatricians was telling me he's seeing all kinds of illnesses that he never used to see. Not only juvenile diabetes, but inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that a lot of the docs don't even know what to call. And girls are going through puberty much earlier; and kids are allergic to just about everything, and asthma is out of control. Everyone knows it's our foods... Kids today are the first generation to grow up on this stuff.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Girl, Growing Up, Kids
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, November 2, 2009.

Everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Giving, Empathy, Use
"How Not to Be Alone" by Jonathan Safran Foer, www.nytimes.com. June 8, 2013.

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Night, Skulls, Loud
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don't care if we're lying. I am a bad person. I don't care. I don't care what you are.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Lying, Care, Persons
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.310, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Prayer, Memories, Ifs
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Kindness, Thinking, Might
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2009.

Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Cancer, Food, Athlete
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, March 4, 2010..

But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Philosophy, Thinking, Years
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, books.google.ru. March 4, 2010.

I realized I was on a something island. 'How did I get here,' I wondered, surrounded by Nothing, "and how can I get back?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Islands, I Realized, Get Back
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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