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Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Like
Novel
Switch
Written
Flip
Looking
Hall
Dark
Halls
Funny
Passed
Light
Suddenly
Find
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Hallway
Writing
Walking
Hallways

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Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.
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I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.
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A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
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I can't even say 'hair pie,'' I told him, 'unless I'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits.
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Abraham responds Here I am when God asks him to sacrifice his son, and he answers Here I am when his son asks him about what is happening. It's a paradoxical moment. He can't be fully present for his God or his son.
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Sometimes one simply wants to disappear.
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Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.
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Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.
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Grandfather informs me that is not possible.
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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.
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We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames
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Dear Anna, we will live in a home with no walls, so that everywhere we go will be our home.
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You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.
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Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don't cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears - you know, it's a horrible thing.
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I got tired, I told him. Not worn out, but worn through. Like one of those wives who wakes up one morning and says I can't bake any more bread.
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You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist.
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Everything else happened - why not the things that could have?
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The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.
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There has yet to be a human to survive a span of history without at least one end of the world.
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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.
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