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ae23358
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I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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8381174
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We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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21596ba
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You can call your turkey organic and torture it daily.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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fde7675
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She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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0f5e6aa
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Good people don't make fewer mistakes, they're just better at apologizing.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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990d80c
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For how long could we fail until we surrendered?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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9e5c247
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And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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2c49753
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When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. 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 ..
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feelings
sadness
happiness
life
old
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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ccc86f2
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Grief and loss are probably the most fearful creatures that exist. But loss shouldn't be a fearful creature. It should be a creature of wisdom. It should teach us not to fear that tomorrow may never come, but live fully, as though the hours are melting away like seconds. Loss should teach us to cherish those we love, to never do anything that will result in regret, and to cheer on tomorrow with all of its promises of greatness. It's easy an..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e911310
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Only a few months into our marriage," writes the grandfather, "we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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28c58a1
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Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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5ced0a8
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Sometimes one simply wants to disappear.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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9ebe024
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Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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fbb137b
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This is a kiss. It is what happens when lips are puckered and pressed against something, sometimes other lips, sometimes a cheek, sometimes something else. It depends...This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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de082e5
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She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else
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slang
english
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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2b56c21
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That's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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025ec15
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In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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b175e05
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The disgraced Usurer Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening... He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the oven, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside... When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint... Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed t..
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life
love
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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59a9640
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I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty. ... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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911d2d7
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He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.
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jonathan safran foer |
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d5a0911
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Oskar Schell: If the sun were to explode, you wouldn't even know about it for 8 minutes because thats how long it takes for light to travel to us. For eight minutes the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm. It was a year since my dad died and I could feel my eight minutes with him... were running out.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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8821c1b
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One of the greatest opportunities to live our values-or betray them-lies in the food we put on our plates.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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094c433
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I wanted so much to have a life. Even just once, even for a second.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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345acb9
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It was late, and we were tired. We assumed there would be other nights. Anna's breathing started to slow, but I still wanted to talk. She rolled onto her side. I said, I want to tell you something. She said, You can tell me tomorrow. I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. The books in my father's shed were sighing. The sheets ..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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264bb31
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I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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0d7035f
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She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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3ec2586
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Our stories are so fundamental to us that it's easy to forget that we choose them.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e1a3f79
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She repeats things until they are true, or until she can't tell whether they are true or not. She has become an expert at confusing what is with what was with what should be with what could be.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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c17da9b
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Sometimes feelings are like that - not positive, not negative, just a lot.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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047a1f6
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Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn't exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a10acf7
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What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f3f2324
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Whether we're talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that's not the question. Is it more important that sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That's the question.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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993b171
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We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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cab7bc1
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Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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3165dce
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and when is enough proof enough?
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faith
proof
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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8d65e71
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He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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80e3d15
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And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary.
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life
love
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a63f5c1
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the desire to wring out a few more drips of happiness almost always destroyed the happiness you were so lucky to have, and so foolish never to acknowledge.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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b919f06
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They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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8f75830
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We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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38fddcb
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I've raised my voice at a human only twice in my entire life. Both times at the same human. Put differently: I've known only one human in my entire life. Put differently: I've allowed only one human to know me.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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2f58421
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We are being very nomadic with the truth, yes?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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7d5688b
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A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write, because that was exactly how it felt. We could retell our stories and make them better, more representative or aspirational. Or we could choose to tell different stories. The world itself had another chance.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a1bd0d2
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Cher Marcel, Allo. I am Oskar's mom. I have thought about it a ton, and I have decided that it isn't obvious why Oskar should go to French lessons, so he will no longer be going to go see you on Sundays like he used to. I want to thank you very much for everything you have taught Oskar, particularly the conditional tense, which is weird. Obviously, there's no need to call me when Oskar doesn't come to his lessons, because I already know, be..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |