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Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes about Writing

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Let love write on you for awhile.

Let love write on you for awhile.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.243, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Boots, Letters
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

With writing, we have second chances.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Second Chance, Chance
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.144, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Boys, Men

Jed Perl writes precisely and ecstatically. Antoine' s Alphabet is a history and a fairy tale, a work of criticism, and a work of art.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Art, Writing, Criticism

I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Space, Bars
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.176, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Block, Writing, Two

I need an office, so I can have a place where I don't write.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Office, Needs

Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.

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

I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Needs
"Blunt speaking" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2005.

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Running, Song, Writing
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.18, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write, because that was exactly how it felt. We could retell our stories and make them better, more representative or aspirational. Or we could choose to tell different stories. The world itself had another chance.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Home, Writing, Son
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, March 4, 2010.

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Dark, Light

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.

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

ART Art is that thing having to do only with itself—the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no expamples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, teverything with an end exists outside of that thing, i.e., "I want to sell this", or "I want this to make me famous and loved", or "I want this to make me whole", or worse, "I want this to make others whole.") And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt and compose. Is this foolish of us?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Art, Writing, Successful

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

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 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

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 observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to loose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Heart, Joy
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Darling, You asked me to write you a letter, so I am writing you a letter. I do not know why I am writing you this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about, but I am writing it nonetheless, because I love you very much and trust that you have some good purpose for having me write this letter. I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love. Your father

Jonathan Safran Foer
Father, Love You, Writing

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think."

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

I think it's a greater risk not to write about 9\11. If you're in my position - a New Yorker who felt the event very deeply and a writer who wants to write about things he feels deeply about - I think it's risky to avoid what's right in front of you.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Thinking, Risk

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Long, Intuition
"Extremely Dead and Incredibly Gross". Interview with Keira Butler, www.motherjones.com. November 25, 2009.

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