Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything

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

“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

“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

“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

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated (2002)
Context: "You do not have to present not-truths to me, Sasha. I am not a child."(But I do. That is what you always fail to understand. I present not-truths in order to protect you. That is also why I try so inflexibly to be a funny person. Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.)

“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

“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?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time…
… why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“There is nothing wrong with compromising, even if you are compromising almost everything.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 175

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“But I knew the truth and that's why I was so sad. Every moment before this one depends on this one. Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Everything I did, I did because I thought it was the correct thing to do… I am not a hero, it is true… But I am not a bad person, either.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

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

Jonathan Safran Foer

“We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Variant: We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar's grandmother
"My Feelings" (p. 314)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I said, I want to tell you something She said, you can tell me tomorrow I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary. I love you. Grandma.