Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.

We all know about love, faith, sadness, despair, hope, hopelessness, longing, desire... those are things we all have inside of us, and that's what my songs are about... what it means to be a human being.

I love everything about the human experience.

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

I have everything that I would possibly imagine. I have a family that loves me and that's... more than most kids have. And it's really awesome for me to experience this life... because most kids don't have this life, and I'm trying to reach out to them and help them.

I know that the purpose of life is to understand and be in the present moment with the people you love. It's just that simple.

I feel that if I'm going through something, I'm sure someone else is, too. I try to be as honest with myself and others as I can be.

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books.

I'm still human - I can't not feel.

You know, something happened to me when I became 70. I started to feel a tremendous love for the human race, and life and this planet, the universe, the whole shebang.

I believe that love between people is the greatest life-giving force in the world. It's intensely frustrating and inevitably makes a fool of you, but you can't stop going back to it, and it's pretty much the defining experience of a human being.

When I write, my goal is to delve deeply enough into the human experience to find a sort of universality. Once you dig down underneath surface differences, we are all human beings. And all human beings want essentially the same things at our core. We want to love and be loved. We want to be safe. We want our loved ones to be safe.

We cannot let another person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.

There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.

I think a lot of times we can get distracted and not be in the moment with people and be missing all the life happening in the moment.

I'm very human.

The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be.

But I still feel like a normal person... I've walked the streets and I know what it feels like. I speak with humility, and apparently those songs connect with people.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

I don't have to research humanity, I just have to be courageous enough to share that part of myself with everybody.

Stay in your heart.

I have gained so much more from my experiences of being open and loving humanity rather than being jaded and being closed-off.

Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

The thing I really love about my fans is the vulnerability and openness, the crying and the hugs. They are so kind.