Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”

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

Every time I left our apartment to go searching for the lock, I became a little lighter, because I was getting closer to Dad. But I also became a little heavier, because I was getting farther from Mom.

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,

I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I’m not living. In this life, I’m sitting in an airport trying to explain myself to my unborn son,