Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

For me a book has always been a chance to reach out and connect to someone and not be alone.

Here is the infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me.

Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone.

For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me.

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.

In my room I'd barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well... I wasn't entirely alone... It's not possible to sleep alone.

This is one of the defining sorrows of books: that we cannot see one another.

The point of books is to combat loneliness.

The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

All I want is for people, when they read my books, to feel companioned, to feel they're not alone in the world.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.

I turn to books for a feeling of companionship: for somebody knowing what I have known.

For most of my childhood, even through college, there was a lot of feeling very alone. I loved TV, so when those very special episodes of anything came, or when certain characters reflected the world I lived in, I felt connected.

I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.

The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.

Books are solitudes in which we meet.

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship

As long as we have books, we are not alone.

I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.

When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.