Emily Levine > Emily's Quotes

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. (Death)”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I like to see people reunited, 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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“She wants to know if I love her, 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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“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!”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. 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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I never confused what I had with what I was.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Mom told me, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don’t you think?” I told her, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Every moment before this one depends on this one.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things...”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I said, I want to tell you something.
She said, you can tell me tomorrow.
I had never told her how much I loved her.
She was my sister.
We slept in the same bed.
There was never a right time to say it.
It was always unnecessary.
The books in my father's shed were sighing.
The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing.
I thought about waking her.
But it was unnecessary.
There would be other nights.
And how can you say I love you to someone you love?
I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.
Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you ... It's always necessary.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden