Jonathan Safran Foer: Doing

Jonathan Safran Foer is Novelist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Jonathan Safran Foer: 524 quotes52 likes

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“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

“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 am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“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)

“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

“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 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

“Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was. Sometimes I feel ensnared in this, as if no matter what I do, what will come has already been fixed.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“Do you have any coffee?'…'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.' 'You don't do that anymore?' 'There are questions I don't ask anymore.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“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?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“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 book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Something having been done just about everywhere just about always is no kind of justification for doing it now.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close