Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
50 quotes
"She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness."
"Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!"
"Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?"
"Because sometimes people who seem goodend up being not as good as you might have hoped."
"There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive."
"Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing."
"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."
"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 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?"
"Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life."
"Fuck You!' [Oskar said] 'Exuse me!' [His mom said] 'Sorry. I mean, screw you.' 'You need a time-out!' 'I need a mausoleum!"
"Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?"
"I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides 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 outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me."
"My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp."
"But I knew the truth and that's why I was so sad. Every moment before this one depends on this one. Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment."
"We spent our lives making livings."
"Songs are as sad as the listener."
"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."
"As we drove, I imagined we were standing still and the world was coming toward us."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon."
"Did she feel pity for me, did she want me to suffer?The next morning she led me to the coat closet, which faces the living room, she went in with me, we were in there all day, although she knew he wouldn’t come until the afternoon, it was too small, we needed more space between us, we needed Nothing Places, she said “This is what it’s felt like, except you weren’t here.” We looked at each other in silence for hours."
"Sometimes my hand starts to burn and I am convinced we are writing the same word at the same moment."