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We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Imposter
Recognizing
Shared
Smile

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

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It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
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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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The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.
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I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: I look at what I write so I can see what I think.
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Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.
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Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.
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It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns.
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Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.
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?
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And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?
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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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Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.
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We aren’t exactly emptying the oceans it’s more like clear-cutting a forest with thousands of species to create massive fields with one type of soybean.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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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Years were passing through the spaces between moments.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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What does it remember like?
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We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.
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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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I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.
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Love...is the immovability of truth.
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