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Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.


Jonathan Safran Foer

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JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convinc...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is someth...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surpris...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more th...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newsp...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Mom told me, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don’t you think?” I told her, “I...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for for...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I said, I want to tell you something.
She said, you can tell me tomorrow.
I had never told...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Words never mean what we want them to mean.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I knew that our time together was almost over, I asked her if she liked sports, she asked me if I li...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER We slept in the same bed.
There was never a right time to say it.
It was always unnecessar...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Touching him was always so important to me. It was something I lived for. I never could explain why....
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Being reliable is something. Being good.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER You can't love anything more than something you miss.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER You only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and mor...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Anyway.
I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are app...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I have made my own choice, which is vegetarianism, but it's not the choice I'm imposing on a...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER The kind of funny irony is that a lot of people talk about ethical meat eating as if it's a way ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER It's rarely talked about, but hunting for sport is just about as vile as we humans get.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly h...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shame...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER ...and when is enough proof enough?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER E allora quanta sofferenza è accettabile? È questa la base di tutto, ed è questo che ognuno di no...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Jacob wrestled with God for the blessing. He wrestled with Esau for the blessing. He wrestled with I...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER ...This is a kiss. It is what happens when lips are puckered and pressed against something, sometime...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the ro...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was mad...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenl...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' and orders it. The other s...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But m...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER The letter was destroyed, but its final paragraph is inside of me. She wrote, I wish I could be a gi...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER This is the sixty-nine,” I told him,
presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my finger...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Puoi levarti anche le calze?" Gli chiedeva lei. "E i calzoni?"
"E tu ti puoi levare i tuoi?" JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER THE PROBLEM OF GOOD: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY BAD PEOPLE
(SEE ...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I will walk without noise and I will open the door in darkness and I will
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as sim...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, s...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER I have been waiting for you for so long.”
I pointed to the car. “We are searching for Trach...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER