Jonathan Safran Foer — Quotes from Author's Books

It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life.

I miss you already. 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.

[...] it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

— I'm not smarter than you, I'm more knowledgeable than you, and that's only because I'm older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

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 from something you do not want.

So what about skyscrapers for dead people that were built down?

I don’t believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated.

Nothing is beautiful and true.

Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore?

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it.

But compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

It was my grandmother who taught me that one tea bag makes as many cups of tea as you’re serving, and that every part of the apple is edible.

When I was four, we fostered a cousin’s dog for a summer. I kicked it. My father told me we don’t kick animals. When I was seven, I mourned the death of my goldfish. I learned that my father had flushed him down the toilet. I told my father — in other, less civil words — we don’t flush animals down the toilet.