Jonathan Safran Foer

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.

...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.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

I think and think and think, I__e thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

What is suffering? I'm not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans _ small and large, crude and multifaceted _ that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at.

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.

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.' I read that in a book somewhere and it's stuck in my head. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not true. More likely, the young and the old are lonely in different ways, in their own ways...

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__ come back

It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about __leanor Rigby._ It__ true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?

There are more places you haven't heard of then you're heard of!' I loved that

What__ the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways? Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong _s you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis? Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass _ storefront, do you look at what__ inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn__ make _ou any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has _een irrevocably spoiled for you? If your deepest secret became public, _ould you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it in any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it__ a __urder of crows_ and a __ake of buzzards_ but it__ a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you__e _fraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it__ an __nkindness _f ravens_?

It__ much easier to be cruel than one might think.

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.

And so it was when anyone tried to speak: their minds would become tangled in remembrance. Words became floods of thought with no beginning or end, and would drown the speaker before he could reach the life raft of the point he was trying to make. It was impossible to remember what one meant, what, after all of the words, was intended.

Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Today, it isn't unusual for meat to travel almost halfway around the globe to reach your supermarket. The average distance our meat travels hovers arounf fifteen hundred miles.

She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.