Jonathan safran foer quotes

I'm grateful for anything that reminds me of what's possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It's so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared.

There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to.

Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.

Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.

It is my great hope that our paths, however long and winding, will cross again.

You have to do something bad to do something good.

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

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?

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

I wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.

...the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.

The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on.

If it weren't my life, I wouldn't have believed it.

[She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

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

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning.

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.

What does it remember like?

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.

We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against.

Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?

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

There has yet to be a human to survive a span of history without at least one end of the world.

I brought the birdcages to the windows. I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages. I poured the fish down the drain. I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars. I released the insects onto the street. And the reptiles. And the mice. I told them, Go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn’t come back

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.

I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?

I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?

Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.

...and when is enough proof enough?

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.

I spent my life learning to feel less.

Years were passing through the spaces between moments.

It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.

Why I'm not where you are ...

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

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)

We spent our lives making livings.

I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.

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!

This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.

Only humans can cry tears.

I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty. ... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.

We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?

I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?

A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living.

She saw through the shell of me into the center of me

I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love steak. But there is a limit to my love.

If I’d been someone else in a different world I’d've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it.

People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.

I'd lost count of the disappointments.

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.

My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.

It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss.

Every moment before this one depends on this one.

Love...is the immovability of truth.

The end of the world has come often, and continues to come.

She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.

For how long could we fail until we surrendered?

Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.

Since the world has changed so much, the same values don't lead to the same choices anymore.

There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

In the end, everyone loses everyone.

People hurt each other. That's what people do.

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

Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.

It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.

Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.

Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other.

...there are only some many times you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.

One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

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

Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?

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.

The gift is for you...The surprise is for me.

I am not a bad person. I am a good person who has lived in a bad time." Alex's grandfather..Everything is Illuminated

That’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there.

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.

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.

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

There is nothing wrong with compromising. Even if you compromise almost everything.

She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes

Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.

My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.

It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.

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

Try to live so that you can always tell the truth.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.

What were we spending so much time doing if not getting to know each other?

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.

You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked its wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was first to notice the negative bird it left in the window? Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to trace it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was?

Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

If it had and answer, it wouldn't really be love, would it?

You only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.

Everything else happened - why not the things that could have?

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.

Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I've discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

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.

Sometimes you have to put your fears in order.

Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was

I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.

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.

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?

She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.

Nothing is beautiful and true.

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

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

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.