Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Use humor as aggressively as chemo. Laugh until your hair falls out. There is nothing that can't be played for a laugh.

During the winter much of Yakutia experiences a temperature inversion which results in an unusual phenomena. When the temperature dips below minus 53° Celsius, you can often hear a soft whooshing noise like the sound of grain being poured. It is caused by vapour in one's own breath turning to ice crystals in the cold, dry air. The local Yakut people call this sound "The Whisper of the Stars.

She smiled a smile to bring a thousand ships to harbor.

Could we kiss for a little bit? ... Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with kips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.

The Gypsy girl carved love letters into trees, filling the forest with notes for him.

Why would a farmer lock the doors of his turkey farm?

No one who isn't us is going to destroy Earth, and no one who isn't us is going to save it. The most hopeless conditions can inspire the most hopeful actions. We have found ways to restore life on Earth in the event of a total collapse because we have found ways to cause a total collapse of life on Earth. We are the flood, and we are the ark.

I spent my life learning how to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

I think this is why I relish writing for you so much. It makes it possible for me to be not like I am, but as I desire for Little Igor to see me. I can be funny, because I have time to meditate about how to be funny, and I can repair my mistakes when I perform mistakes, and I can be a melancholy person in matters that are interesting, not only melancholy. When writing, we have second chances

You only get to keep what you refuse to let go off.

Is God sad? He would have to exist to be sad, wouldn't He? I know, she said, giving his shoulder a little slap. That's why I was asking, so I might finally know if you believed! Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal to be sad about. And if He doesn't exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.

In the meantime, while I think-while you think, while we think-our actions and inactions create and destroy the world.

We were not rich, but there was nothing we wanted. From my bedroom window I watched the world. And I was safe from the world.

She was also the most lonely and sad. She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could b divided into its infinite spectrum.

En el origen de toda historia yace siempre una ausencia

Lvov is a city like New York City in America. New York City, in truth, was designed on the model of Lvov.

Love me, because love does not exist, and I tried everything.

The floors were like marble chessboards, and the ceilings were like cakes.

I understand, now, the tragedy of my childhood. It wasn't the bombing. It was that I never once liked a photograph of myself. I couldn't.

Dad used to say that sometimes you have to put your fears in order...

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

There are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls!

We were looking for an acceptable compromise.

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