Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.

It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

She has become an expert at confusing what is with what was with what should be with what could be.

She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

[Having learned that Saul had ordered fasting until evening] But Jonathan said, “My father has troubled the land. Look now, how my countenance has brightened because I tasted a little of this honey. How much better if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies which they found! For now would there not have been a much greater slaughter among the Philistines?”

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.