Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Without context, we'd all be monsters.

Touching him was always so important to me. It was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches. My fingers against his shoulder. The outsides of our thighs touching as we squeezed together on the bus. I couldn't explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?

I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness. We made love in nothing places and turned the lights off. It felt like crying. We could not look at each other. It always had to be from behind. Like that first time. And I knew he wasn't thinking of me. He squeezed my sides so hard, and pushed so hard. Like he was trying to push me through to somewhere else. Why does anyone ever make love?

I wanted to protect him, which I was sure I could do, even if I could not protect myself.

Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

I made up my mind that nothing,, nothing was going to stop me Not even me.

I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you , and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you , and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.

But I dig Negroes. I dig them all the way.

I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on.

We believed in our grandmother's cooking more fervently than we believed in God.

accepting the compromise of the way we have been, the way we are, and the way we will likely be...may we live together in unwavering love and good health, amen.

I'm grateful for anything that reminds me of what's possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It's so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared.

Touch had always saved them in the past. No matter the anger or hurt, no matter the depth of the aloneness, a touch, even a light and passing touch, reminded them of their long togetherness.

In truth I was manufacturing a brick wall of shits.

When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint . . . Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him.

She was so beautiful, like someone who you will never meet, but always dream of meeting, like someone who is too good for you.

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away (from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves) or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something

In the end I was the clay and she was the sculptor, I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

It's a rule that we never listen to sad music, we made that rule early on, songs are as sad as the listener, we hardly ever listen to music.

Mom said, His spirit is there, and that made me really angry. I told her, Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells! His memory is there. His memory is here, I said, pointing at my head. Dad had a spirit, she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!

Changing how we eat will not be enough, on its own, to save the planet, but we cannot save the planet without changing how we eat.

I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to loose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news.