Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

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?

So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”

I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.

It’s a shame that we have to live, but it’s a tragedy that we get to live only one life.

Every moment before this one depends on this one. Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment.

Everything that’s born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they’re all on fire, and we’re all trapped.