Quotes By Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

“Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.”

“From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be confused 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 since been laid permanently on their backs – the metropolitan cities will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Towns will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples invisible.”

“God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, ‘God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them.” God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch – man created in the image of what? the animals? – the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation.”

“I realized that your mother couldn’t see the emptiness, she couldn’t see anything…All of the words I’d written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?”

“She died in my arms, saying, “I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.”

“I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.”

“That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.”

“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.”

“When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying ‘I don’t want to die.’ That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.”

“Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”

“A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.”

“…and when is enough proof enough?”

“With writing, we have second chances.”

“I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it’s in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that’s born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they’re all on fire, and we’re all trapped.”

“It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.”