Kendall

“I said, 'I need to know how he died.'
He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?'
So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Mom said, "His spirit is there," and that made me really angry. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." "His memory is here," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I opened the coffin.
I was surprised again, although again I shouldn't have been. I was surprised that Dad wasn't there. In my brain I knew he wouldn't be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else. Or maybe I was surprised by incredibly empty it was. I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I don't know how late it got.
I probably fell asleep, but I don't remember. I cried so much that everything blurred into everything else. At some point she was carrying me to my room. Then I was in bed. She was looking over me. I don't believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. But it was also incredibly simple. In my only life, she was my mom, and I was her son.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close