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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

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Thought
Anything
Even
Love
Notice
Absence
Presence
Hate
Someone

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My test for writing is always, is this fun or does it feel like a job? Is it moving me? Or am I just fulfilling my own expectations - or even worse, somebody else's?
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Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.
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Be the instrument playing the sound of your life's passing
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I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.
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I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: Do you like me?
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I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
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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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Reality Hunger is more than thought-provoking it's one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time.
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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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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
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The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.
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Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.
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When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.
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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
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There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on.
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I said, 'I need to know how he died.' He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?' So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.
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We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.
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...people with nothing to declare carry the most.
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Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
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Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It's almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.
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