Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

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He Wrote, Are you OK? I told him, My eyes are crummy. He wrote, But are you OK? I told him, That's a very complicated question. He wrote, That's a very simple answer. I asked, Are you OK? He wrote, Some mornings I wake up feeling grateful.

Jonathan Safran Foer
"It's easy to be emotional. You can always make a scene... Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good."

Jonathan Safran Foer
I felt that night, on the stage, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

Jonathan Safran Foer
I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness.

Jonathan Safran Foer
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
It was terrible. All of the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having.

Jonathan Safran Foer
In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.

Jonathan Safran Foer
What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through a little speaker...I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time.

Jonathan Safran Foer
When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.

Jonathan Safran Foer
That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it

Jonathan Safran Foer
When you look up 'hilarious' in the dictionary, there's a picture of you.

Jonathan Safran Foer
It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I know you look both ways before you cross the street, but I want you to look both ways a second time, because I told you to.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?

Jonathan Safran Foer
I got tired, I told him. Not worn out, but worn through. Like one of those wives who wakes up one morning and says I can't bake any more bread.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I'm so afraid of losing something I love, that I refuse to love anything.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I brought the birdcages to the windows. I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages. I poured the fish down the drain. I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars. I released the insects onto the street. And the reptiles. And the mice. I told them, Go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn't come back

Jonathan Safran Foer
When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I said, I want to tell you something She said, you can tell me tomorrow I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary. I love you. Grandma.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

Jonathan Safran Foer
I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

Jonathan Safran Foer
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
What were we spending so much time doing if not getting to know each other?

Jonathan Safran Foer
[…] but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don't care if we're lying. I am a bad person. I don't care. I don't care what you are.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.

Jonathan Safran Foer
The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.

Jonathan Safran Foer