Quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

You only get to keep what you refuse to let go of

August has passed, and yet summer continues by force to grow days. They sprout secretly between the chapters of the year, covertly included between its pages.

Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of...

And this is what living next to a waterfall is like, Safran. Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good nights sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesnt hear her husbands ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Yor great-great-great-grandchildrens will be. But we learn to live in that love

All that mattered was him looking at me

Its nice to believe that when confronted with facts people will just suddenly respond to them but, in fact, most people dont really work like that.

One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second

Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.

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

... we decided to create a Nothing Place in the living room, it seemed necessary, because there are times when one needs to disappear while in the living room, and sometimes one simply wants to disappear, we made this zone slightly larger so that one of us could lie down in it, it was a rule that you never would look at that rectangle of space, it didnt exist, and when you were in it, neither did you, for a while that was enough, but only for a while, we required more rules, on our second anniversary we marked off the entire guest room as a Nothing Place, it seemed like a good idea at the time, sometimes a small patch at the foot of the bed or a rectangle in the living room isnt enough privacy, the side of the door that faced the guest room was Nothing, the side that faced the hallway was Something, the knob that connected them was neither Something nor Nothing. The walls of the hallway were Nothing, even pictures need to disappear, especially pictures, but the hallway itself was Something, the bathtub was Nothing, the bathwater was Something, the hair on our bodies was Nothing, of course, but once it collected around the drain it was Something, we were trying to make our lives easier, trying, with all of our rules, to make life effortless. But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone youve lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, theres nothing to say. It became difficult to navigate from Something to Something without accidentally walking through Nothing, and when Something—a key, a pen, a pocketwatch—was accidentally left in a Nothing Place, it never could be retrieved, that was an unspoken rule, like nearly all of our rules have been. There came a point, a year or two ago, when our apartment was more Nothing than Something, that in itself didnt have to be a problem, it could have been a good thing, it could have saved us. We got worse. I was sitting on the sofa in the second bedroom one afternoon, thinking and thinking and thinking, when I realized I was on a Something island. How did I get here, I wondered, surrounded by Nothing, and how can I get back? The longer your mother and I lived together, the more we took each others assumptions for granted, the less was said, the more misunderstood, Id often remember having designated a space as Nothing when she was sure we had agreed that it was Something, our unspoken agreements led to disagreements, to suffering, I started to undress right in front of her, this was just a few months ago, and she said, Thomas! What are you doing! and I gestured, I thought this was Nothing, covering myself with one of my daybooks, and she said, Its Something! We took the blueprint of our apartment from the hallway closet and taped it to the inside of the front door, with an orange and a green marker we separated Something from Nothing. This is Something, we decided. This is Nothing. Something. Something. Nothing. Something. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Everything was forever fixed, there would be only peace and happiness, it wasnt until last night, our last night together, that the inevitable question finally arose, I told her, Something, by covering her face with my hands and then lifting them like a marriage veil. We must be. But I knew, in the most protected part of my heart, the truth.

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. Thats the truest version of our story of eating animals.Can we tell a new story?

Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you dont want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but its also a parents worst nightmare: That they wont need you. Its like the real tragedy of parenting.

Im less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always cant help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things.

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

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 its rarely driving the car.

Theres never been a culture that wasnt obsessed with food. The sort of sad thing is that our obsession is no longer with food, but with the price of food.

“Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.”

“Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!”

“Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but theyre nothing.”

“There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least were alive.”