Jose > Jose's Quotes

“How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Your train ride appeased you?” I asked. “Oh, God,” he said, “twenty-six hours, fucking unbelievable.” This girl Unbelievable must be very majestic, I thought.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“With writing, we have second chances.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.”
― William Congreve

“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.”
― Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

“You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature