Top 500 Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

52. “My insides don’t match up with my outsides. -Do anyone’s inside and outsides match up? -I don’t know. I’m only me. -Maybe that’s what a person’s personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

53. “Every moment before this one depends on this one.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

54. “I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

55. “Our relationship to the environment matters, our relationship to animals matters, and our relationship to culture matters.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

56. “Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

57. “I’m sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

58. “It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can’t people say what they mean at the time?”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

59. “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.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

60. “She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

61. “We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

62. “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.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

63. “She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with a chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

64. “She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

65. “Songs are as sad as the listener.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

66. “I thought, it’s a shame that we have to live, but it’s a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I’d had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

67. “Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

68. “She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

69. “Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

70. “Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

71. “His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

72. “Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

73. “Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn’t exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

74. “Dear Anna, we will live in a home with no walls, so that everywhere we go will be our home.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

75. “I spent my life learning to feel less.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

76. “In the water I saw my father’s face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

77. “I am willing to be annoying if that’s what was necessary.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

78. “Grandfather informs me that is not possible.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

79. “Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

80. “There are only two reactions to climate change: resignation or resistance. We can submit to death, or we can use the prospect of death to emphasize life.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

81. “Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

82. “Jacob wrestled with God for the blessing. He wrestled with Esau for the blessing. He wrestled with Isaac for the blessing, with Laban for the blessing, and in each case he eventually prevailed. He wrestled because he recognized that the blessings were worth the struggle. He knew that you only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

83. “She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

84. “Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

85. “To feel alone is to be alone.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

86. “Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

87. “I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster’s paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

88. “She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

89. “With writing, we have second chances.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

90. “We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

91. “Grandfather kicked the stop pedal, and my face gave a high-five to the front window.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

92. “I’m deeply curious about Jewish things. I’ve toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

93. “When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

94. “Chickens can do many things, but they cannot make sophisticated deals with humans.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

95. “Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

96. “Even Alf is not humorous at times.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

97. “Even if I don’t like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don’t know what they are. So tell me which is worse.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

98. “It’s so hard to express yourself.? I understand this.? I want to express myself.? The same is true for me.? I’m looking for my voice.? It’s in your mouth.? I want to do something I’m not ashamed of.? Something you are proud of, yes?? Not even. I just don’t want to be ashamed.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

99. “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.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

100. “No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I’ll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer