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I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Something
Always
Rather
Read
Write
Need
Needs
Writing

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

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Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.
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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It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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He Wrote, Are you OK? I told him, My eyes are crummy. He wrote, But are you OK? I told him, That's a very complicated question. He wrote, That's a very simple answer. I asked, Are you OK? He wrote, Some mornings I wake up feeling grateful.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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I said, 'I need to know how he died.' He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?' So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Grandfather kicked the stop pedal, and my face gave a high-five to the front window.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Stories about food are stories about us-our history and our values.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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That’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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The word vegetarian, I think, does a disservice because there are a lot of people who care but maybe don't care, or can't care in an ultimate way. If you think about environmentalism, nobody would ask, Are you an environmentalist or not? The question doesn't make any sense.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Love...is the immovability of truth.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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I think it's a greater risk not to write about 9\11. If you're in my position - a New Yorker who felt the event very deeply and a writer who wants to write about things he feels deeply about - I think it's risky to avoid what's right in front of you.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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
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I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore, or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history, but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more strongly we will want to follow our best instincts.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
Jonathan Safran Foer