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?

I knew the truth, which was that if she could have chosen, it would have been my funeral we were driving to.

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

A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.

I never thought of my books as being special, only necessary,

I met your mother, that may have been what made our marriage possible, she never had to know me.

I’d experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering,

I zipped myself all the way into the sleeping bag of myself, not because I was hurt, and not because I had broken something, but because they were cracking up.

I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.

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

that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet,

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 wanted to protect him from all of the terrible things that no one deserves.

Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently.

I told them, Go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn’t come back.

She died in my arms, saying, “I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

“I feel too much. That’s what’s going on.” “Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?” “My insides don’t match up with my out-sides.” “Do anyone’s insides and outsides match up?” “I don’t know. I’m only me.” “Maybe that’s what a person’s personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.” “But it’s worse for me.” “I wonder if everyone thinks it’s worse for him.” “Probably. But it really is worse for me.”

I couldn’t tell what he was feeling, because I couldn’t speak the language of his feelings.