Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn't know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me. He saved your life. I didn't eat it. You didn't eat it? It was pork. I wouldn't eat pork. Why? What do you mean why? What, because it wasn't kosher? Of course. But not even to save your life? If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.

Yes, I cannot dispute that she is crazy. But she is also compassionate.

It's just that sometimes we make things up just to talk

He was caught somewhere between his mother's last kiss and the first kiss he would give his child, between the war that was and would be

I can't even say 'hair pie,'' I told him, 'unless I'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits....

One day I wandered away from her and hid. I liked the way it felt to have someone look for me, to hear my name again and again. Oskar! Oskar! Maybe I didn't even like it, but I needed it right then.

I knew that we were sharing something with our eyes, but I didn't know what, and I didn't know if it mattered.

I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?

There was nothing, which would have been unfortunate, unless nothing was a clue. Was nothing a clue?

He said, Let there be light. And there was darkness.

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life [...]

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

I wanted to shout myself into his ear.

The absurdity of it, the agony and beauty of it, almost brought Jacob to his knees: these two independent consciousnesses, neither of which existed ten and a half years ago, and existed only because of him, could now not only operate free of him (that much he'd known for a long time), but demand freedom.

Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we have traveled, just as the dead can never be counted.

Being reliable is something. Being good.

I don't know how late it got. I probably fell asleep, but I don't remember. I cried so much that everything blurred into everything else. At some point she was carrying me to my room. Then I was in bed. She was looking over me. I don't believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. But it was also incredibly simple. In my only life, she was my mom, and I was her son.

The horse at the bottom of the river, shrouded by the sunken night sky, closed its heavy eyes. The prehistoric ant in Yankel's ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame.

In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

Is this why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?

My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

It's an empowering idea. The entire goliath of the food industry is driven and determined by the choices we make as the waiter gets impatient for our order or in the practicalities ad whimsies of what we load into our shopping carts or farmers'-market bags.

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.

I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.