Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Want, Blank

• I'm grateful for anything that reminds me of what's possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It's so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Laughter, Book, Grateful

• SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Life, Smart, Book

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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 were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing. I thought about waking her. but it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. 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... It's always necessary. I love you.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Father, Book, Fall

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.314, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Literature was the only religion her father practiced, when a book fell on the floor he kissed it, when he was done with a book he tried to give it away to someone who would love it.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Father, Book, Giving

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Years, Band

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Falling In Love, Art, Book

• 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.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Writing, Animal

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2010.

• 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.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Feel Good, Feels

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• From the movie "Everything is Illuminated" based on a book by Jonathan Safran Foer: I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Past, Light

• I started carrying blank books like this one around, which I would fill with all the things I couldn't say.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Blank

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Quiet, Internet

• Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Real, Book, Real Life

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.195, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Art, Book, Political

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Memories, Book, Law

  "Commentaries For A New American Passover Seder, Jonathan Safran Foer Presents New Haggadah", www.huffingtonpost.com. March 29, 2012.

• There's a really wonderful book called "Man Is Not Alone" by Abraham Joshua Heschel, which makes the case that everybody is religious. You know, we've just been sort of too vigilant about our terminology and our definitions and too precious about it. But there's nobody who is indifferent to the experience of standing in front of an ocean at night. There's nobody who is indifferent to the feeling of, you know, lying on your back and looking up at the night sky.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Religious, Lying, Book

  Source: www.npr.org

• In America right now, we use words like 'smart' to talk about bombs. American rhetoric is grounded in ideas of capital-G Good, capital-E Evil, and it's very clear who is on which side. But in a book you can do just the opposite. You can use all lower-case words.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Smart, Book, Opposites

  "Something happened" by Suzie Mackenzie, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2005.

• I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Ideas

• Life is precious, so I ought to spend my days, you know, making sandwiches for homeless people and tending to the elderly in hospice care. Life is precious, so I should give everything away, except that I live in the world. And in the world, I actually have needs and wants, and I value my needs and wants. And I live in the world, and I can't just go make sandwiches every day because I also have to take kids to school. I also have to, you know, write books because that's my livelihood.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, School, Kids

  Source: www.npr.org

• Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user’s manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Prayer, Philosophy, Book

  "New American Haggadah". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2012.

• I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Disappointment, Real, Book

• Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Children, Book, Hero

• I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Distance, Loneliness, Book

• The books could be completely worthless, and things we don't even read now could be considered the most important books.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Book, Important, Worthless

  Interview with Joshua Wolf Shenk, www.motherjones.com. May 2005.

• Reality Hunger is more than thought-provoking; it's one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Beautiful, Book, Reality

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