Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud Incredibly Close.
I should probably thank Jay Leno for that Sandra Bullock interview. If it wasn't for that day, I wouldn't be aware of such treasure. Both the movie and the book strike you. Though they will not be my new obsession, (unlike English Patient) they are worth mentioning. First, you label them as a simple wave hitting ashore, then as time passes, the silent shock wave sinks in with a deafening light, blinding thunder. The following quotes got in deeper than I intended to let them in, so I took note of them, for my sake.
“In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath
every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever
people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same
place, and in the morning the weathermen could report if the water level
of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if
New York was in heavy boots. And when something really terrible happened
- like a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack - an
extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central
Park to put sandbags around the reservoir.” p.38
"that secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into." p.71
“Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds.
Could they fly if there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?" p.78
"When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It was
too big for me and would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a
necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler to make it that
way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies,
more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at
all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. If I
were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice." p.79
"It’s a rule that we never listen to sad music, we made that rule early
on, songs are as sad as the listener, we hardly ever listen to music." p.108
"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, I sit on the side with a
coffee and write in my daybook, I examine the
flight schedules that I've already memorized, I observe, I write, I try
not to remember the life that I didn't want to lose but lost and have
to remember, being here gills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy
isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old
news." p.109
"But a friction began to arise between Nothing and
Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like
the memory of someone you’ve lost, what can you say about that, at
night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing
door and stained the Something hallway, there’s nothing to say." p.110
"Everything was forever fixed, there would only be peace and happiness,
it wasn’t until last night, our last night together, that the inevitable
question finally arose, I told her, “Something,” by covering her face
with my hands and then lifting them like a marriage veil. “We must be.”
But I knew, in the most protected part of my heart, the truth." p.111
the center of me followed her, but I was left with the shell of me p.113
"Sometimes I wonder if she knows, I wonder in my
Nothingest moments if she’s testing me, if she types nonsense all day
long, or types nothing at all, just to see what I’ll do in response, 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." p.130
"I'm sorry for my inability to let the unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things." p.132
“I knew I was about to destroy what she’d been able
to rebuild, but I had only one life. I heard her behind me. Because of
myself, or despite myself, I turned back, ‘Dont cry,’ I told her, by
putting her fingers on my face and pushing imaginary tears up my cheeks
and back into my eyes, "I know" she said as she wiped the real tears
from her cheeks, ı stomped my feet, this meant, "I won't go to the
airport." "Go to the airport,"she said, I touched her chest, then
pointed her hand out toward the world, then pointed her hand at her
chest, "I know," she said, "Of course I know that."p 135.
"The ax won! It's always that way." p.161
"Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many
times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't
know what the something is.” p.163
"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." p.179
"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness." p.180
"Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live my life." p.181
"How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other doe it take to make love?" p.181
"It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss." p.208
thousands of people were left to suffer hope. p.215
"The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put
her love from him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he could never
open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough
just to know that it was there." p.220
"Well, then why do you love everybody so much?" p.239
"I read something in National Geographic about how, when an animal thinks
it's going to die, it gets panicky and starts to act crazy. But when it
knows it's going to die, it gets very, very calm." p.256
I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back p.274
"Highs and lows make you feel that hings matter, but they're nothing. So
what's something? Being reliable is something. Being good." p.297