Quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

I dont think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.

The mistakes Ive made are dead to me. But I cant take back the things I never did.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

Theres nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time......why didnt I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.

...people with nothing to declare carry the most.

If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?

Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!

Anyway.I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing on. And she said, “But it’s turtles all the way down!”I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.

Grandfather informs me that is not possible.

I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or justcrack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, “Ce n’étais pas moi!”What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboard down the street at night you could hear everyones heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyones hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but dont really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldnt have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasnt someone, somewhere, laughing?

Because sometimes people who seem goodend up being not as good as you might have hoped.

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.

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.