Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

His mind of man, a secret makes I meet him with a start he carries a circumference in which I have no part.

But you I never understood, Your spirit's secret hides like goldSunk in a Spanish galleon Ages ago in waters cold.

The world is always curious, and people become valuable merely for their inaccessibility

I think it's important to have mystique.

There was the Door to which I found no key; There was the Veil through which I might see.

I've always had an air of mystery.

Iran explains nothing to anyone but God.

The Mysterious Stranger

I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.

I believe absence is a great element of charm.

In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

p.61 He [Roark] was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or perhaps that he was and they weren't.

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow.

Things keep their secrets.

That's what I'll be. A silhouette, rarely seen, and yet believed in.

She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.

Some things were beyond understanding.

Life was an impenetrable mystery cloaked in babble.

I think a good poem should have some inscrutable part. You can't quite explain it. The poem can only explain itself to a certain limit and at that point you enter into a little bit of mystery. That for me is the perfect poem: to begin in clarity and to end in mystery.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Something that simply mystifies me.

There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. This is complete understanding.

The deep sea can be fathomed, but who knows the heart of a woman?