One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
Jonathan Safran FoerYou need to have a reader's sympathy in order to accomplish anything. It's like at a reading, I find it's better to read something funny than to read something tragic. It just goes over better because you have a finite amount of time with somebody. Of course, in a book, you have a lot of time. But you still do want to make a certain impression right when you begin.
Jonathan Safran FoerWe could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.
Jonathan Safran FoerIn the water I saw my father's face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created.
Jonathan Safran FoerThe Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.
Jonathan Safran Foer