Michelle Richardson

“We live in the world, Jacob thought. That thought always seemed to insert itself, usually in opposition to the word ideally. Ideally, we would make sandwiches at homeless shelters every weekend, and learn instruments late in life, and stop thinking about the middle of life as late in life, and use some mental resource other than Google, and some physical resource other than Amazon, and permanently retire mac and cheese, and give at least a quarter of the time and attention to aging relatives that they deserve, and never put a child in front of a screen. But we live in the world, and in the world there’s soccer practice, and speech therapy, and grocery shopping, and homework, and keeping the house respectably clean, and money, and moods, and fatigue, and also we’re only human, and humans not only need but deserve things like time with a coffee and the paper, and seeing friends, and taking breathers, so as nice as that idea is, there’s just no way we can make it happen. Ought to, but can’t.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am

“He was too ethical, and too much of a coward. (Sometimes it was hard to differentiate.)”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am

“Golda Meir had told Anwar Sadat: “We can forgive you for killing our children, but we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am

“But it’s actually pretty easy to say horrible things: retard, cunt, whatever. In a way, it’s even easier because we know exactly how bad the words are. There’s nothing scary about them. Part of what makes something really hard to say is the not knowing.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am