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

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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

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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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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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It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?
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We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other.
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The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.
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Or maybe what he fears is just the opposite: that nobody is looking that his death, like his life, is without purpose that there is neither greater good nor evil--only people living and dying because their bodies function and then do not that the universe is a rip.
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Why didn't he say goodbye? I gave myself a bruise. Why didn't he say 'I love you'?
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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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It is unrealistic to think you can have an inflexible identity that never has to give or take or make compromises.
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Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'we exist because we exist. . .we could imagine all sorts of universes like this one, but this is the one that happened.
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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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One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second
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Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
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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.
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When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.
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Whether we're talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that's not the question. Is it more important that sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That's the question.
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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.
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It was terrible. All of the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having.
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What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?
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But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere.
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