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I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. But now I think the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
World
Terrible
Wonderful
Bigs
Shrinking
Used
Celebrate
Way
Opposite
Think
Opposites
Thinking
Appreciate
Life
Humor

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Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.
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I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
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I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.
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We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.
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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?
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I'd lost count of the disappointments.
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One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
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Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on.
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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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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.
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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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The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.
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That’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there.
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The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.
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She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.
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Since the world has changed so much, the same values don't lead to the same choices anymore.
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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.
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Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.
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I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
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