Quote

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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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Doe
Tests
Feel
Expectations
Feels
Worse
Writing
Fun
Even
Somebody
Always
Moving
Like
Jobs
Fulfilling
Else
Test

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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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I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.
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We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames
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What does it remember like?
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Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
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I need an office, so I can have a place where I don't write.
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Only someone who'd never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them.
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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.
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It is unrealistic to think you can have an inflexible identity that never has to give or take or make compromises.
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...because he had been waiting for someone to come back to him, so every time someone knocked on the door, he couldn't stop himself from hoping it might be that person, even though he knew he shouldn't hope.
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The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.
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Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?
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If it weren't my life, I wouldn't have believed it.
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We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.
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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.
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Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?
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She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.
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As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.
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Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.
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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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