Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes (262 quotes)

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I felt that night, on the stage, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming? (p. 145)

“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 book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. But now I think the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

Jonathan Safran Foer: Trending quotes

“She was not crying
Which surprised me very much
But I understand now
That she had found places
For her melancholy
That were behind more masks
Than only her eyes”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 224

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 113

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

Jonathan Safran Foer

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 99

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. (p. 17)

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Variant: The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.
Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“I never confused what I had with what I was.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 74

“The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“She has become an expert at confusingwithwithwith.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“Every moment before this one depends on this one.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“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 book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things…”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

“My friends are appeased to stay in Odessa for their entire lives. They are appeased to age like their parents, and become parents like their parents. They do not desire anything more than everything they have known.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 43

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 130

“Songs are as sad as the listener.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Variant: It’s the tragedy of loving, you can’t love anything more than something you miss.
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 208

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“he came to think, It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

"My Feelings" (p. 179)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

“She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Variant: She had been in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love, but rather doing something much more ordinary
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others -- The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Variant: We stopped laughing, I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“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”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 71

“With writing, we have second chances.”