1
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
2
I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything, ' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.Jonathan Safran Foer
3
He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.Jonathan Safran Foer
4
She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.Jonathan Safran Foer
5
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.Jonathan Safran Foer
6
Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.Jonathan Safran Foer
7
The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.Jonathan Safran Foer
8
There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.Jonathan Safran Foer
9
...people with nothing to declare carry the most.Jonathan Safran Foer
10
Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!Jonathan Safran Foer
11
Anyway.I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing on. And she said, “But it’s turtles all the way down! ” I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises. .Jonathan Safran Foer
12
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?Jonathan Safran Foer
13
Because sometimes people who seem goodend up being not as good as you might have hoped.Jonathan Safran Foer
14
Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!Jonathan Safran Foer
15
Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing.Jonathan Safran Foer
16
There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.Jonathan Safran Foer
17
...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
18
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.Jonathan Safran Foer
19
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.Jonathan Safran Foer
20
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.Jonathan Safran Foer