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I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Done
Things
Never
Constrain
Definitions
Makes
Someone
Anything

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

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I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.
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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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You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist.
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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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I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty. ... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.
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I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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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That’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there.
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We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames
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This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.
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She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.
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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Love...is the immovability of truth.
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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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.
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.
Jonathan Safran Foer