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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.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Make
Inflexible
Never
Unrealistic
Think
Compromises
Thinking
Compromise
Identity
Give
Take
Giving

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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 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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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
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If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.
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I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?
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I think after you live it's like before you lived.
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We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against.
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Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.
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Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.
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It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.
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Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.
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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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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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Stories about food are stories about us-our history and our values.
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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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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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She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.
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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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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.
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