Jonathan Safran Foer

Writer

1977-02-21

Quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

• Mother is a humble woman. Very, very humble. She toils at a small caf one hour distance from our home. She presents food and drink to customers there, and says to me, I mount the autobus for an hour to work all day doing things I hate. You want to know why? It is for you, Alexi-stop-spleening-me! One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be a family. What she does not clutch is that I already do things for her that I hate. I listen to her when she talks to me. I resist complaining about my pygmy allowance. And did I mention that I do not spleen her nearly so much as I desire to? But I do not do these things because we are a family. I do them because they are common decencies. That is an idiom that the hero taught me. I do them because I am not a big fucking asshole. That is another idiom that the hero taught me.

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• I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders.

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• I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.

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• The disgraced Usurer Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening... He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the oven, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside... When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint... Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him.

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• I'm not smarter than you, I'm more knowledgeable than you, and that's only because I'm older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

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• From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light--a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes.In about one and a half centuries--after the lovers who made the glow will have long been laid permanently on their backs--metropolises will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Shtetls will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples, invisible.The glow is born from the sum of thousands of loves: newlyweds and teenagers who spark like lighters out of butane, pairs of men who burn fast and bright, pairs of women who illuminate for hours with soft multiple glows, orgies like rock and flint toys sold at festivals, couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leaves on the eye after you turn away fr

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• I have tutored Little Igor to be a man of this world. For example, I exhibited him a smutty magazine three days yore, so that he should be appraised of the many positions in which I am carnal. 'This is sixty-nine,' I told him, presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my fingers--two of them--on the action, so that he would not overlook it. 'Why is it dubbed sixty-nine?' he asked, because he is a person hot on fire with curiosity. 'It was invented in 1969. My friend Gregory knows a friend of the nephew of the inventor.' 'What did people do before 1969?' 'Merely blowjobs and masticating box, but never in chorus.

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• This is the sixty-nine, I told him, presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my fingers -- two of them -- on the action, so that he would not overlook it. Why is it dubbed sixty-nine? he asked, because he is a person hot on fire with curiosity. It was invented in 1969. My friend Gregory knows a friend of the nephew of the inventor. What did people do before 1969? Merely blowjobs and masticating box, but never in chorus.

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• I know a lot about birds and bees, but I don't know very much about the birds and the bees. Everything I do know I had to teach myself on the Internet, because I don't have anyone to ask. For example, I know that you give someone a blowjob by putting your penis in their mouth.

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• As we drove, I imagined we were standing still and the world was coming toward us.

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• If I'd been someone else in a different world I'd've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.

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• One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

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• I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others— the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.

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• Songs are as sad as the listener.

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• In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for 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...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.

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• So many days in their shared life. So many experiences. How had they managed to spend the previous sixteen years unlearning each other? How had all the presence summed to disappearance?

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• How many times, in those first weeks, did he enter the room and stand by the door, unable to speak? How many times did she ask, Do you need anything?And he would say, No.And she would say Are you sure?And he would say, Yes, but think, Ask again.And she would say, I know, but think, Come to me.And he would say , Ask again.And she would say, Come to me.And saying nothing, he would.There they would be, side by side, her hand on his thigh, his head resting on her chest. If they had been teenagers, it would have looked like the beginning of love, but they'd been married for twenty years, and it was the exhumation of love.

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• I remembered my mother's speech at my wedding. In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it. Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it?

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• Let's go to bed. Those four words differentiate a marriage from every other kind of relationship. We aren't going to find a way to agree, but let's go to bed. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We hate each other right now, but let's go to bed. It's the only one we have. Let's go to our sides, but the sides of the same bed. Let's retreat into ourselves, but together. How many conversations had ended with those four words? How many fights?

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