Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

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

Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the Earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore?

We are being very nomadic with the truth, yes?

What if I never stop inventing?

I zipped myself all the way into the sleeping bag of myself, not because I was hurt, and not because I had broken something, but because they were cracking up.

I regret how much I believed in the future.

We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat.

She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances.

I've raised my voice at a human only twice in my entire life. Both times at the same human. Put differently: I've known only one human in my entire life. Put differently: I've allowed only one human to know me.

That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

Abraham didn't say, "What do you want?" He didn't say, "Yes?" He answered with a statement: "Here I am." Whatever God needs or wants, Abraham is wholly present for Him, without conditions or reservations or need for explanation.

Money can't buy you happiness, but happiness isn't everything.

From the movie Everything is Illuminated based on a book by Jonathan Safran Foer: I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. 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. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine.

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

Chickens can do many things, but they cannot make sophisticated deals with humans.

However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sense of the word. And we know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power. Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless--it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another.

What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable... Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying...We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood.

I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own.

And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?

I'm not smarter than you, I'm more knowledgeable than you, and that's only because I'm older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

In the end, everyone loses everyone.

The difference between conceding and accepting is depression.

There's a Hasidic proverb: 'While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.'" Jacob

It would be possible, in theory, for life and art to be reversed.