Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Life was a small negative space cut out of the eternal solidity, and for the first time, it felt precious - not like all of the words that had come to mean nothing, but like the last breath of a drowning victim.

It is better to lose than never to have had.

How did her life live itself without her.

In the water I saw my father's face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created.

I realized I was on a something island. 'How did I get here,' I wondered, surrounded by Nothing, and how can I get back?

It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950's you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism.

He couldn't bear to live, but he couldn't bear to die. He couldn't bear the thought of he making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn't bear to keep it, but he couldn't bear to destroy it either.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster's paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.

Choosing to eat fewer animal products is probably the most important action an individual can take to reverse global warming—it has a known and significant effect on the environment, and, done collectively, would push the culture and the marketplace with more force than any march.

We cracked up together, which was necessary, because she loved me again.

They do not desire anything more than everything they have known.

What does it remember like?

It's better to lose than to never have had.

We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don't care if we're lying. I am a bad person. I don't care. I don't care what you are.

but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.

and i wouldn't say no to something sweet.

Life is precious, Jacob thought. The most important of all thoughts, and the most obvious, and the most difficult to remember to have. How different my life would have been if I could have had that thought before I was forced to.

It is as if after surviving so much, there was no longer reason to survive.

But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere.

Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing.

Grandfather kicked the stop pedal, and my face gave a high-five to the front window.

Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.