Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

I would stare at maps of Delaware for hours.

We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past.

Age makes all things greater after their death; a name comes to the tongue easier from the grave.

A holiday is when you celebrate something that's all finished up, that happened a long time ago and now there's nothing left to celebrate but the dead.

Their memory's like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can't remember Tell the things you can't forget that History puts a saint in every dream.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

I have always had a love for American geography, and especially for the landscapes of the South. One of my pleasures has been to drive across it, with no one in the world knowing where I am, languidly absorbing the thoughts and memories of old moments, of people vanished now from my life.

The past is more than a memory.

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.

It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing.

But pain may be a gift to us. Remember, after all, that pain is one of the ways we register in memory the things that vanish, that are taken away. We fix them in our minds forever by yearning, by pain, by crying out. Pain, the pain that seems unbearable at the time, is memory's first imprinting step, the cornerstone of the temple we erect inside us in memory of the dead. Pain is part of memory, and memory is a God-given gift.

From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone.

There are people you remember and people you dream of.

... if one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love without remembering?

There is pleasure in calm remembrance of a past sorrow.

I think Heaven will not be as good as earth, unless it bring with it that sweet power to remember, which is the staple of Heaven here.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.

The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

My mom was there, in some form, in some sense, in some universe. My mom was still my mom, even if she only lived in books and door locks and the smell of fried tomatoes and old paper. She lived.

To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.

Lord, keep my memory green.

I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.