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You have to do something bad to do something good.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Something
Good

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

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I never confused what I had with what I was.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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...people with nothing to declare carry the most.
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And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?
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Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.
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I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.
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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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.
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Only humans can cry tears.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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It would be possible, in theory, for life and art to be reversed.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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?
Jonathan Safran Foer
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If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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September 11 had such a strong visual component, the most visually documented event in human history. Nothing's ever been seen by as many people as that was. Our experiences of the day, our memories of the day are just so tied up in images of buildings falling and bodies falling.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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
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Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.
Jonathan Safran Foer