Quote

They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.

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
Great
Lovers
Believe
Parts
Reciprocated
Necessary
Willfully
Things
Creating
Fictions
Love
Fiction
Lover
Life
Playing
Believing
Greater
Saving
Lying
Wrote

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

Image
As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I wanted so much to have a life. Even just once, even for a second.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
August has passed, and yet summer continues by force to grow days. They sprout secretly between the chapters of the year, covertly included between its pages.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Try to live so that you can always tell the truth.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
[…] but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.
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
None of the ways people were talking about September 11 felt right to me. I don't buy into the way George W. Bush talks about it. I don't buy into the way the 9/11 commission talks about it. It isn't that I don't believe them. It's just that they're not the tellings for me.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Be the instrument playing the sound of your life's passing
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.
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
We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Do you have any coffee?'...'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We've never claimed more, and we've never had less.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean].
Jonathan Safran Foer