Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

faces pressed against the pane, full of little, content with sawdust tears.

desperately knocking against the blind little world, i loosened one of its planks, opening a window to a new, wider world. There, spread out, was a profusion of geography, of atmosphere, of full empty air.

I beseech you to forgive us, and to make us better than we are. Make us good.

Thomas! What are you doing! and I gestured, I thought this was Nothing, covering myself with one of my daybooks ,and she said, It's Something!

He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me ..

Stories about food are stories about us-our history and our values.

Wir können uns nicht mit Unwissenheit herausreden, nur mit Gleichgültigkeit.

Do you know that I am the Gypsy girl and you are Safran, and that I am Kolker and you are Brod, and that I am your grandmother and you are Grandfather, and that I am Alex and you are you, and that I am you and you are me? Do you not comprehend that we can bring each other safety and peace? When we were under the stars in Trachimbrod, did you not feel it then? Do not present not-truths to me. Not to me.

She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

It's nice to believe that when confronted with facts people will just suddenly respond to them but, in fact, most people don't really work like that.

She was a prism through with sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum

If you want to know who protects you from the people that take without asking, it is the police. If you want to know who protects you from the police, it is the people who take without asking. And very often they are the same people.

Or how he was once found on the well regarded Rabbi's front lawn, bound in white string, and said he tied one around his finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end could only remember the string. Is this someone to trust for a story?

Alone, one can live perfectly. But not a life.

Parents don't have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and Parenthood so utterly beautiful: the All or nothing wager. The Faith.

In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world.

This is the lesson we learned from everything that happened -- there is no God. It took all of the hidden faces for Him to prove this to us. What if it was a challenge of your faith? I said. I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this. What if it was not in His power? I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened. What if it was man and not God that did all of this? I do not believe in man, either.

When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decision--eating 'like everyone else'--is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic.

And when she said, Father, I love you , she was neither naive nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough to lie.

Lo que olvidamos de los animales es lo que empezamos a olvidar de nosotros mismos.

What if it was man and not God that did all of this? I do not believe in man, either.

Anyone who suggests that there is a perfect symbiosis between the farmers' interest and the animals' is probably trying to sell you something (and it's not made of tofu)

So, then why am I your son? Because Mom and I made love, and one of my sperm fertilized one of her eggs. Excuse me while I regurgitate. Don't act your age.

And when the blush of a schoolgirl's cheeks was mistaken for the crimson of a holy man's fingers, it was the schoolgirl who was called hussy, tramp, slut.