Everything is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Grandfather kicked the stop pedal, and my face gave a high-five to the front window.

God," he said, "twenty-six hours, fucking unbelievable." This girl Unbelievable must be very majestic, I thought.

He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew.

He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping.

humorous is the only truthful way to tell a sad story,

If you want to know who protects you from the people that take without asking, it is the police. If you want to know who protects you from the police, it is the people who take without asking. And very often they are the same people.

"You are a schmuck," I informed the hero. "You're not using the word correctly," he said. "Yes I am," I said.

there are only so many times that you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.

This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?

Many people try so rigidly to forget after the war that they can no longer remember."

"She hid it in a jar that she put in the ground. I knew this because she told me. She said, 'Just in case.' Many people did this. The ground is still filled with rings, and money, and pictures, and Jewish things. I was only able to find a few of them, but they fill the earth."

I observed that the hero had small rivers descending his face, and I wanted to put my hand on his face, to be architecture for him.

Why could he say things to this woman that he had never before encountered when he could not say things to me?

He knew that I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. He knew that it is, by love's definition, impossible to love two people.

I found it very moving to feel his touch, and to remember that hands can show also love.

she was not crying, which surprised me very much, but I understand now that she had found places for her melancholy that were behind more masks than only her eyes.