Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Was his death an essential stage in the continuation of his life?

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.

What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.

I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.

Be the instrument playing the sound of your life's passing

I spent my life learning 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.

Marriage is like a chess match is initiated and the board expands over time until it takes up all of a life.

Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.

Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity.

My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.

The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It's already happening.

There is no greater gift than time.

It's a good rule of thumb, it seems to me: if you're not allowed to see where something comes from, don't put it in your mouth.

It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?

Profound, bottomless self-doubt - it has no value - what's the point? In a way, it takes up as much time as anything else.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time......why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration.

I'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things.

For a long time, I thought I would like to be a doctor. Such a good profession. So explicitly good. Never a waste of time.

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

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.