January 2012
“That idea is strange to me. People keep on loving. People keep on loving even if you are not there in their face everyday to remind them? People keep on loving even if they no longer see you at all? People keep on loving even if they are loving someone else? Impossible: to believe you can be loved in absence when you don’t even know how it feels to be loved when you are there.”
—Camilla Gibb
December 2011
“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.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person’s essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
—Haruki Murakami
“I like to see people reunited, maybe that’s a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, because I did. It’s that at the end of my search, I wanted to be able to say: I don’t know how I could have tried harder.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“When I’d come in, she’d call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She’d stroke my hair and say, “I love you so much,” and when I sneezed she’d say, “Bless you, you know how much I love you, don’t you?” and when I got up for a tissue she’d say, “Let me get that for you, I love you so much,” and when I looked for a pen to do my homework she’d say, “Use mine, anything for you,” and when I had an itch on my leg she’d say, “Is this the spot, let me hug you,” and when I said I was going up to my room she’d call after me, “What can I do for you, I love you so much,” and I always wanted to say, but never said: Love me less.”
—Nicole Krauss
“His arm was so thick and strong. I was sure it would protect me for as long as I lived. And it did. Even after I lost him. The memory of his arm wraps around me as his arm used to. Each day has been chained to the previous one. But the weeks have had wings. Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live my life.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“His hair turned gray that winter. I thought it was snow. 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
“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 had said, “I lost a baby,” 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
“She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”
—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
“Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”
—Paulo Coelho
“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
“She wanted his profession of feelings to do the trick. She really did. She knew he wanted that too. Whether he spoke the truth or not, he thought he could make her feel better, and he really, really wanted to. But it wasn’t what she needed. Her need was as big as the stars, and he was down there on the beach, so quiet she could hardly hear him.”
—Ann Brashares
“I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”
—Stephen Fry
“I started inventing things, and then I couldn’t stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it’s because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn’t constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That’s how my brain was.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“I think part of the reason I’m attracted to him is because he’s such a mess. I mean, the people I have loved in my life have never been easy to love. I’m not used to normal. I’m used to disaster. I don’t know, as messed up as he is, he’s also sort of exciting, sort of a challenge. I’m accustomed to working for love.”
—Augusten Burroughs
