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Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes - Page 19

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Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn’t exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.

Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn’t exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Doe, Answers, Imagine
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Should Have, Suffering, Rooms
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Each day has been chained to the previous one. But the weeks have wings. Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live my life.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Believe, Wings, Each Day
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.181, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Paper, Next, Pads
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Sad, Thinking, Lucky
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.227, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals. Can we tell a new story?

Jonathan Safran Foer
War, Animal, Choices

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Kind, Hated, Persons
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Ideas, Important

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
Book, Feel Good, Feels
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.

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

The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Hands, Philosopher, Cruelty
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2010.

The world is a big place," he said, "but so is the inside of an apartment!

Jonathan Safran Foer
World, Bigs, Said
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.163, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Air, Always Trying, Tea

Life was a small negative space cut out of the eternal solidity, and for the first time, it felt precious - not like all of the words that had come to mean nothing, but like the last breath of a drowning victim.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Mean, Cutting, Space
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.135, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

My boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column beneath us. How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Lonely, Gone, Boots

He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Silly, Writing, People

and i wouldn't say no to something sweet.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Sweet, Something Sweet
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Men, Balance, Window
Jonathan Safran Foer (2003). “Everything is Illuminated”, p.89, Penguin UK

They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Lying, Believe, Creating

[Grandfather] would manufacture funnies with Grandmother before she died about how he was in love with other women who were not her. She knew it was only funnies because she would laugh in volumes. 'Anna,' he would say, 'I am going to marry that one with the pink hat.' And she would say, 'To whom are you going to marry her?' And he would say, 'To me.' I would laugh very much in the back seat, and she would say to him, 'But you are no priest.' And he would say, 'I am today.' And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Believe, Grandmother, Laughing

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Powerful, Mean, People
"Jonathan Safran Foer on 'Eating Animals'". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. November 19, 2009.

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends’ houses. I like places where there’s stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Coffee, Home, Writing
Interview with Joshua Wolf Shenk, www.motherjones.com. May 2005.

I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.

Jonathan Safran Foer
School, Son, Thinking
"Speechless" by Jonathan Safran Foer, www.newyorker.com. September 12, 2011.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Use, Antibiotics, Health Professionals
"Eating animals is making us sick" by Jonathan Safran Foer, www.cnn.com. October 28, 2009.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Wall, Character, Reflection

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