Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them.

It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

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

The sky slowly pulled up its blue dress to reveal night.

To feel alone is to be alone.

There were things I wanted to tell him.

But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past.

It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh.

Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

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.

No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out.

If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I’ll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse.

It took me as long as I had known him to get rid of all of his words. Like turning an hourglass over.

They learned to hate her unknowability, her untouchability, the collage of her.

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.

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

I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

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

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

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!

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.

We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.

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

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

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

Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.

Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.

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

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

The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it.

Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.

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

Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.

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?

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.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other.

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?

Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.

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.

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

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don't cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears - you know, it's a horrible thing.

I spent my life learning to feel less.

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.