Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” Quotes (131 Quotes)

Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.

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.

I'd lost count of the disappointments.

Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.

Sometimes I wonder if she knows, I wonder in my Nothingest moments if she's testing me, if she types nonsense all day long, or types nothing at all, just to see what I'll do in response, 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.

We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames

Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.

Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.

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 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, becuase 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.

If it had and answer, it wouldn't really be love, would it?

Mr. Black started singing a song in some weird language, which I guess was Philippinish.

Sometimes one simply wants to disappear.

We need much bigger pockets I thought as I lay in my bed counting off the seven minutes that it takes a normal person to fall asleep. 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 borough and for cities a pocket that could hold the universe.

As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad's last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known.

I am willing to be annoying if that's what was necessary.

I like to see people reunited, 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.

I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.

If it weren't my life, I wouldn't have believed it.

My boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column beneath us. How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company.

Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?

We spent our lives making livings.

Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine.

I believed him. I was not stupid. I was his wife.

I missed you even when I was with you. That's been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.

I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to lose but lost and have to remember

In the end I was the clay and she was the sculptor, I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.

Songs are as sad as the listener.

We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things...

Being reliable is something. Being good.

I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.

I never confused what I had with what I was.

I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up to him.

In the end, everyone loses everyone.

My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.

Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake.

We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat.

But I knew that there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.

I could write more, but that is all that matters.

I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to loose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?

No matter how much I feel, I'm not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I'm gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I'll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I'm not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn't help anything. It just makes everyone's life worse.

Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!

We were trying to make our lives easier, trying, with all our rules, to make life effortless. But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light spilled from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say.

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.

I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need