Quote

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

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
Like
Novel
Switch
Written
Flip
Looking
Hall
Dark
Halls
Funny
Passed
Light
Suddenly
Find
Discover
Hallway
Writing
Walking
Hallways

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

Image
Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Words never mean what we want them to mean.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Be the instrument playing the sound of your life's passing
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I realized that your mother couldn't see the emptiness, she couldn't see anything...All of the words I'd written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?
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
Why I'm not where you are ...
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I made up my mind that nothing,, nothing was going to stop me Not even me.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
You only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
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
Image
This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: I look at what I write so I can see what I think.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Do you have any coffee?'...'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying 'I don't want to die.' That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Raising your kids vegetarian is a great way to encourage them to do the opposite of what you want! But the goal is not to have them have the same values that I have. It's to have them act on their values.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I was more alone than if I had been alone.
Jonathan Safran Foer