Quote

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Thing
Develop
World
Cry
People
Adults
Functioning
Deserve
Homeless
Tears
Layers
Probably
Adult
Though
Protection
Even
Horrible

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Do you have any coffee?'...'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.
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Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.
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Whether we're talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that's not the question. Is it more important that sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That's the question.
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How did her life live itself without her.
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Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on.
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They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.
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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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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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Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.
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People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
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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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Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.
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It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
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She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else
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As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.
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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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August has passed, and yet summer continues by force to grow days. They sprout secretly between the chapters of the year, covertly included between its pages.
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We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.
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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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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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