Jonathan Safran Foer

Quotes

1. I wanted to build walls around him, I wanted to separate inside from outside, I wanted to give him an infinitely long blank book and the rest of time. (p. 280)

2. 

   I'm so afraid of losing something I love, that I refuse to love anything. (p. 216)

3. 

   I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?

4. 

   The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did. (p. 309)

5. 

   I said, I want to tell you something She said, you can tell me tomorrow I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary. I love you. Grandma.

   p. 314

6. 

   So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go! (p. 153)

7. 

   I hope you never love anything as much as I love you. (p. 73)

8. 

   "It's easy to be emotional. You can always make a scene... Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good."

   p. 297

9. 

   It's always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.

10. 

    There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him, so I buried them, and let them hurt me. (p. 181)

11. 

    That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into. (p. 71)

12. 

    Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.