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Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Real
Replacement
Replacements
Books
Lives
Thought
Book
Without

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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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I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.
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She said, Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need? I said, It depends on what it means to need.
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It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.
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I've never particularly liked bankers.
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This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
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Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.
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We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing Hey Jude. It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.
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You have to do something bad to do something good.
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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.
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I am sure people tell you this constantly but if you looked up 'incredibly beautiful' in the dictionary there would be a picture of you.
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Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine.
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Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it wouldn't be the most reasonable way to understand why you shouldn't do it.
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All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them.
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Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.
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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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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.
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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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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
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Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.
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