Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore?

and I loved how my cheek could feel the hairs on his chest through his T-shirt, and how he always smelled like shaving, even at the end of the day. Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.

I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

I like to see people reunited, maybe that’s a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone,

sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I’m not living.

I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What’s so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What’s so great about feeling and dreaming?

“I want to stop inventing. If I could know how he died, exactly how he died, I wouldn’t have to invent him dying

But I didn’t know, just like I didn’t know it was the last time Dad would ever tuck me in, because you never know.