Quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

(You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.)(You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.)(And you are deserving of shame?)(I am. I am trying to tell you.) We were stupid, he said, because we believed in things.Why is this stupid?Because there are not things to believe in.(Love?)(There is no love. Only the end of love.)(Goodness?)(Do not be a fool.)(God?)(If God exists, He is not to be believed in.)

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

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

...is ignorance bliss, I dont know, but its so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, Ive thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

Its true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I dont mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.

I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether its in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything thats born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but theyre all on fire, and were all trapped.

When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying I dont want to die. That is what death is like. It doesnt matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesnt matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

I said, I need to know how he died.He flipped back and pointed at, Why?So I can stop inventing how he died. Im always inventing.

That is what death is like. It doesnt matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesnt matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

She died in my arms, saying, I dont want to die. That is what death is like. It doesnt matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesnt matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

...and when is enough proof enough?

With writing, we have second chances.

A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I dont know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.

Writings funny, its like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel youve written.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

I realized that your mother couldnt see the emptiness, she couldnt see anything...All of the words Id written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?

God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them. God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch - man created in the image of what? the animals? - the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation.

Mesa, adorno de marfil, arcoíris, cebolla, peinado, molusco, Sabbat, violencia, cutícula, melodrama, cuneta, miel, pañuelo... Nada la conmovía. (...) Nada conseguía ser más de lo que era en realidad. Eran solo cosas, prisioneras de su propia esencia.

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.