Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Your dad didn't die, so I won't be able to explain it to you.

Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.

Only humans can cry tears.

And yet and yet - the last secret of the tree of codes is that nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Nowhere as much as there do we feel possibilities shaken by the nearness of realization. The atmosphere becomes possibilities and we shall wander and make a thousand mistakes. We shall wander along yet not be able to understand.

Yesterday I wanted to turn inside out.

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

She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.

an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.

In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other.

I've thought myself out of happinessone one million times, but never once into it.

You're entirely capable of doing things you aren't moved to do and refraining from things that you want to do. That doesn't make you Gandhi. It makes you an adult.

Sadness and joy aren't opposites of each other. They are each the opposite of indifference.

Years were passing through the spaces between moments.

It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.

Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.

I don't mind if smiles come at my expense, I'm a small price to pay.

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.

A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living.

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?

AND IF WE ARE TO STRIVE FOR A BETTER FUTURE, MUSTN'T WE BE FAMILIAR AND RECONCILED WITH OUR PAST?

he was leaving me. I wondered if I should stop him. If I should wrestle him to the ground and force him to love me. I wanted to hold his shoulders down and shout into his face.