Quote

It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Imagining
Imagine
Thing

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

Image
Mom told me, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don’t you think?” I told her, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
...people with nothing to declare carry the most.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
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
Image
My point is that there are a lot of forces, like the media and the general political rhetoric tells us we should have more. That we should do better than our parents and have a bigger house or a better car.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
What is suffering? I'm not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans — small and large, crude and multifaceted — that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
My insides don't match up with my outsides. Do anyone's inside and outsides match up? I don't know. I'm only me. Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Hunting will never feed lots of people it will always be a hobby.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I started carrying blank books like this one around, which I would fill with all the things I couldn't say.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Stories about food are stories about us-our history and our values.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Can’t you even tell me if I’m on the right track? Buckminster purred, and Dad shrugged his shoulders again. But if you don’t tell me anything, how can I ever be right? He circled something in an article and said, Another way of looking at it would be, how could you ever be wrong?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
It’s a rule that we never listen to sad music, we made that rule early on, songs are as sad as the listener, we hardly ever listen to music.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing. So what's something? Being reliable is something. Being good.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
And yet and yet - the last secret of the tree of codes is that nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Nowhere as much as there do we feel possibilities shaken by the nearness of realization. The atmosphere becomes possibilities and we shall wander and make a thousand mistakes. We shall wander along yet not be able to understand.
Jonathan Safran Foer