Quote

Everything else happened - why not the things that could have?

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
Happened
Else
Everything
Things

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

Image
He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.
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
I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.
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
Isn't it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.
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
She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Is there really anyone, besides Rudy Giuliani, who prefers the new Times Square?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
It would be possible, in theory, for life and art to be reversed.
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