|
a0406b0
|
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
671ad19
|
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.
|
|
future
life
inspirational
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
a207311
|
It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
|
|
life
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
ef673b0
|
I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
|
|
living
extremely
incredibly
safran
foer
jonathan
loud
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
7a49748
|
I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
411231e
|
He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of ..
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
f7ea561
|
I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
5f3afcf
|
Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.
|
|
sadness
music
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
d2f68b1
|
She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.
|
|
mourning
suffering
sorrow
sadness
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
b3611f5
|
I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.
|
|
loneliness
personality
people
differences
emotions
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
789fe67
|
If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
|
|
love
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
cc9ecd0
|
One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
23f8445
|
She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
436374e
|
Songs are as sad as the listener.
|
|
perception
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
c27e924
|
Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
1fac1f4
|
My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
5175599
|
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 skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their mens..
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
94e8c27
|
I missed you even when I was with you. That's been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
9cc650a
|
Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.
|
|
uniqueness
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
2cbf9e5
|
I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
|
|
life
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
4f756a9
|
It's 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 don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
|
|
fear
dying
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
41c5bf3
|
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
dd44715
|
he came to think, It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
c589c61
|
What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
3d20dfc
|
We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
7dbb1e4
|
I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?
|
|
staying
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
5735267
|
In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
55764ff
|
I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
0809d41
|
Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
315ad6a
|
I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.
|
|
regret
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
9964d54
|
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.
|
|
sadness
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
cad7544
|
I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
c14ddeb
|
The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
36a3b94
|
I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others -- The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
aa9ca36
|
The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.
|
|
mistakes
regret
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
715a7c3
|
The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
3f750fd
|
Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
31ad84d
|
I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?"
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
65b05e3
|
You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
1d9e216
|
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.
|
|
struggle
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
d590551
|
Why are you leaving me? He wrote, I do not know how to live. I do not know either but I am trying.
|
|
love
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
90376fc
|
Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a 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 wa..
|
|
grief
life
love
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
526b69e
|
While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
013bc4f
|
I never confused what I had with what I was.
|
|
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |