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Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

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Famous Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

“Young friends, whose string-and-tin-can phone extended from island to island, had to pay out more and more string, as if letting kites go higher and higher. They had more and more to tell each other, and less and less string. The boy asked the girl to say "I love you" into her can, giving her no further explanation. And she didn't ask for any, or say "That's silly," or "We're too young for love," or even suggest that she was saying "I love you" because he asked her to. Instead she said, "I love you." The words traveled through the long, long string. The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put her love for him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he never could open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough just to know it was there.”

LoveInspirationalSweet
Book:Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
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“I've read every letter that you've sent me these past two years. In return, I've sent you many form letters, with the hope of one day being able to give you the proper response you deserve. But the more letters you wrote to me, and the more of yourself you gave, the more daunting my task became. I'm sitting beneath a pear tree as I dictate this to you, overlooking the orchards of a friend's estate. I've spent the past few days here, recovering from some medical treatment that has left me physically and emotionally depleted. As I moped about this morning, feeling sorry for myself, it occurred to me, like a simple solution to an impossible problem: today is the day I've been waiting for. You asked me in your first letter if you could be my protege. I don't know about that, but I would be happy to have you join me in Cambridge for a few days. I could introduce you to my colleagues, treat you to the best curry outside India, and show you just how boring the life of an astrophysicist can be. You can have a bright future in the sciences, Oskar. I would be happy to do anything possible to facilitate such a path. It's wonderful to think what would happen if you put your imagination toward scientific ends. But Oskar, intelligent people write to me all the time. In your fifth letter you asked, "What if I never stop inventing?" That question has stuck with me. I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers.But I wish I were a poet. Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, "Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open." I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on? I wish I had made things for life to depend on. What if you never stop inventing? Maybe you're not inventing at all. I'm being called in for breakfast, so I'll have to end this letter here. There's more I want to tell you, and more I want to hear from you. It's a shame we live on different continents. One shame of many. It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning. Your friend, Stephen Hawking”

LetterStephen Hawking
Book:Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
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“From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light--a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes. In about one and a half centuries--after the lovers who made the glow will have long been laid permanently on their backs--metropolises will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Shtetls will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples, invisible. The glow is born from the sum of thousands of loves: newlyweds and teenagers who spark like lighters out of butane, pairs of men who burn fast and bright, pairs of women who illuminate for hours with soft multiple glows, orgies like rock and flint toys sold at festivals, couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leaves on the eye after you turn away from it. Some nights, some places are a little brighter. It's difficult to stare at New York City on Valentine's Day, or Dublin on St. Patrick's. The old walled city of Jerusalem lights up like a candle on each of Chanukah's eight nights...We're here, the glow...will say in one and a half centuries. We're here, and we're alive.”

Sex
Book:Everything Is Illuminated
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“I have tutored Little Igor to be a man of this world. For example, I exhibited him a smutty magazine three days yore, so that he should be appraised of the many positions in which I am carnal. 'This is sixty-nine,' I told him, presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my fingers--two of them--on the action, so that he would not overlook it. 'Why is it dubbed sixty-nine?' he asked, because he is a person hot on fire with curiosity. 'It was invented in 1969. My friend Gregory knows a friend of the nephew of the inventor.' 'What did people do before 1969?' 'Merely blowjobs and masticating box, but never in chorus.”

HumorSex
Book:Everything Is Illuminated
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“This is the sixty-nine,” I told him, presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my fingers—two of them —on the action, so that he would not overlook it. “Why is it dubbed sixty-nine?” he asked, because he is a person hot on fire with curiosity. “It was invented in 1969. My friend Gregory knows a friend of the nephew of the inventor.” “What did people do before 1969?” “Merely blowjobs and masticating box, but never in chorus.” He will be made a VIP if I have a thing to do with it. This is where the story begins. But first I am burdened to recite my good appearance. I am unequivocally tall. I do not know any women who are taller than me. The women I know who are taller than me are lesbians, for whom 1969 was a very momentous year.”

HumorEverything Is Illuminated69
Book:Everything Is Illuminated
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“Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. society didn’t ban child labor because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting.”

EthicsAnimal RightsNonfictionVegetarianismChild Labor
Book:Eating Animals
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“«Il peggio arrivò verso la fine. Moltissime persone morirono proprio alla fine, e io non sapevo se avrei resistito un altro giorno. Un contadino, un russo, Dio lo benedica, vide in che stato ero, entrò in casa e ne uscì con un pezzo di carne per me.» «Ti salvò la vita.» «Non lo mangiai.» «Non lo mangiasti?» «Era maiale. Non ero disposta a mangiare maiale.» «Perché?» «Che vuol dire perché?» «Come? Perché non era kosher?» «Certo.» «Ma neppure per salvarti la vita?» «Se niente importa, non c'è niente da salvare.»”

Eating AnimalsFoerSe Niente Importa
Book:Eating Animals
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“La biodiversità era stata rimpiazziata dall'uniformità genetica, nelle università i dipartimenti di scienze animali erano diventati dipartimenti di scienze zootecniche, un'attività economica un tempo dominata dalle donne era ormai passata in mano ai maschi, e pollicoltori esperti erano stati rimpiazzati da dipendenti stipendiati. Non ci fu un colpo di pistola a segnare l'inizio della corsa verso il basso. Il terreno si inclinò e tutti scivolarono giù.”

Eating AnimalsFoerSe Niente ImportaJ S Foer
Book:Eating Animals
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“O problema colocado pela carne se tornou abstrato: não há um animal individual, não há uma expressão singular de alegria ou sofrimento, uma cauda sendo abanada, não há um grito. A filósofa Elaine Scarry observou que: 'a beleza sempre ocorre no particular'. A crueldade, por outro lado, prefere a abstração. Algumas pessoas tentaram preencher essa lacuna, caçando ou matando elas próprias os animais, como se essas experiências pudessem de algum modo legitimar o esforço de comê-los. Isso é uma tolice. Assassinar alguém com certeza provaria que você é capaz de matar, mas não seria a forma mais razoável de entender por que você deveria ou não o fazer. Matar você mesmo um animal é, com mais frequência, um modo de esquecer o problema fingindo lembrar-se dele. O que talvez seja mais pernicioso do que a ignorância. É sempre possível acordar alguém que está dormindo, mas nenhum barulho vai acordar alguém que finge estar dormindo.”

VeganismoAnimaisComer AnimaisVegetarianismo
Book:Eating Animals
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“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.”

WritingPlagiarismEverything Is IlluminatedJonathan Safran Foer
Book:Everything Is Illuminated
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“When I was old enough to take baths in the bathtub, and to know I had a penis and a scrotum and everything, I asked her not to sit in the room with me. "Why not?" "Privacy." "Privacy from what? From me?" I didn't want to hurt her feelings, because not hurting her feelings is another of my raisons d'etre. "Just privacy," I said...She agreed to wait outside, but only if I held a ball of yarn, which went under the bathroom door and was connected to the scarf she was knitting. Every few seconds she would give it a tug, and I had to tug back--undoing what she had just done--so that she could know I was OK.”

Bathtub
Book:Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
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“He spent the next weeks blocking scenes of the bureaucrat fucking his wife. On the floor with cooking ingredients. Standing, with socks still on. In the grass of the yard of their new and immense house. He imagined her making noises she never made for him and feeling pleasures he could never provide because the bureaucrat was a man, and he was not a man. Does she suck his penis? he wondered. I know this is a silly thought, a thought that will only bring me pain, but I can't free myself of it. And when she sucks his penis, because she must, what is he doing? Is he pulling her hair back to watch? Is he touching her chest? Is he thinking of someone else? I'll kill him if he is.”

HumorSexMarriageAffairs
Book:Everything Is Illuminated
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“Explaining the rise of MSNBC, the Republican strategist Stuart Stevens said: “I think there are a lot of people out there who are dramatically troubled by the direction of the country, and they would like to be reminded that: (A) they’re not alone, and (B) there’s an alternative”. But loneliness isn’t the problem; the direction of the country is. And being alone together is not an alternative direction, just as a cancer support group does not shrink a tumour. It’s probably true that viewers of MSNBC are sometimes inspired to give money to progressive candidates, and perhaps there’s someone out there whose politics were changed, rather that their loneliness assuaged, by Rachel Maddow. It’s certainly true that a hybrid car gets better mileage than a traditional gas car. But primarily, these things make us feel better. And it can be dangerous to feel better when things are not getting better. […] Too often, the feeling of making a difference doesn’t correspond to the difference being made – worse, an inflated sense of accomplishment can relieve the burden of doing what actually needs to be done. Do the children getting vaccines paid for by Bill Gates really care if he feels annoyed when he gives 46 percent of his vast wealth to charity? Do the children dying of preventable diseases really care if Jeff Bezos feels altruistic when he donates only 1.2 percent of his even vaster wealth? If you found yourself in the back of an ambulance, would you rather have a driver who loathes his job put performs it expertly or one who is passionate about his job but takes twice as long to get you to the hospital?”

ActivismEnvironmentalismProgressivism
Book:We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast
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“We know it (meat eating) is indisputably the number one cause of global warming. So what does it mean exactly to be an environmentalist on a daily basis if you are not thinking about the number one cause of global warming or one of the top two or three causes of all other environmental problems? Does it mean you are necessarily someone who doesn't care about the environment? Obviously not, but it might mean you have a blind spot for something big.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMeanDoeTwoProblemBigsMightCareThreeCausesNumbersEnvironmentEatingBasesBlindEnvironmentalClimate ChangeSpotsMeatGlobal WarmingEnvironmentalistEnvironmental ProblemsBlind SpotsMeat EatingCauses Of Global Warming
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
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