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I Would Have Done Anything For Him. Maybe That Was My Sickness. We Made Love In Nothing Places And Turned The Lights Off. It Felt Like Crying. We Could Not Look At Each Other. It Always Had To Be From Behind. Like That First Time. And I Knew He Wasn't Thinking Of Me. He Squeezed My Sides So Hard, And Pushed So Hard. Like He Was Trying To Push Me Through To Somewhere Else. Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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I Would Have Done

Jonathan Safran Foer

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I Would Have Done Anything For Him. Maybe That Was My Sickness. We Made Love In Nothing Places And Turned The Lights Off. It Felt Like Crying. We Could Not Look At Each Other. It Always Had To Be From Behind. Like That First Time. And I Knew He Wasn't Thinking Of Me. He Squeezed My Sides So Hard, And Pushed So Hard. Like He Was Trying To Push Me Through To Somewhere Else. Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

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I Ran Rather Than Walked, Anxious To Lose My Way. All I Wanted Was To Be Unsure.

[s]o If The Device Of The Person In The Ambulance Detected The Device Of The Person He Loved The Most, Or The Person Who Loved Him The Most, And The Person In The Ambulance Was Really Badly Hurt, And Might Even Die, The Ambulance Could Flash Goodbye! I Love You! Goodbye! I Love You!

We Know It (meat Eating) Is Indisputably The Number One Cause Of Global Warming. So What Does It Mean Exactly To Be An Environmentalist On A Daily Basis If You Are Not Thinking About The Number One Cause Of Global Warming Or One Of The Top Two Or Three Causes Of All Other Environmental Problems? Does It Mean You Are Necessarily Someone Who Doesn't Care About The Environment? Obviously Not, But It Might Mean You Have A Blind Spot For Something Big.

It Might Sound Naive To Suggest That Whether You Order A Chicken Patty Or A Veggie Burger Is A Profoundly Important Decision. Then Again, It Certainly Would Have Sounded Fantastic If In The 1950's You Were Told That Where You Sat In A Restaurant Or On A Bus Could Begin To Uproot Racism.

I Asked Her, "are You An Optimist Or A Pessimist?" She Looked At Her Watch And Said, "i'm Optimistic." "then I Have Some Bad News For You, Because Humans Are Going To Destroy Each Others As Soon As It Becomes Easy Enough To, Which Will Be Very Soon." "why Do Beautiful Songs Make You Sad?" "because They Aren't True." "never?" "nothing Is Beautiful And True." She Smiled, But In A Way That Wasn't Just Happy, And Said, "you Sound Just Like Dad.

And So It Was When Anyone Tried To Speak: Their Minds Would Become Tangled In Remembrance. Words Became Floods Of Thought With No Beginning Or End, And Would Drown The Speaker Before He Could Reach The Life Raft Of The Point He Was Trying To Make. It Was Impossible To Remember What One Meant, What, After All Of The Words, Was Intended.

The Question, I've Come To Think, Is Not What Inspires One To Change, But What Inspires One To Remain Changed.

Sometimes I Can Feel My Bones Straining Under The Weight Of All The Lives I'm Not Living.

Sometimes I Imagined Stitching All Of Our Little Touches Together. How Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Fingers Brushing Against Each Other Does It Take To Make Love? Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

I Shook My Tambourine The Whole Time, Because It Helped Me Remember That Even Though I Was Going Through Different Neighborhoods, I Was Still Me.

My Dream Went All The Way Back To The Beginning. The Rain Rose Into The Clouds, And The Animals Descended The Ramp.

I'm So Afraid Of Losing Something I Love That I Refuse To Love Anything

Everything Is To Protect You. I Exist In Case You Need To Be Protected.

Sometimes I Can Hear My Bones Straining Under The Weight Of All The Lives I'm Not Living.

[...]it Is As If After Surviving So Much, There Was No Longer Reason To Survive.

Time Was Passing Like A Hand Waving From A Train That I Wanted To Be On.

Why I'm Not Where You Are ...

One Of The Things That I Love About Writing Novels Is That It Really Doesn't Matter What Next Step You Take As Long As You're Pursuing Some Intuition Or Instinct. Of Course, Then, Intuitions Or Instincts Don't Make For Great Novels, But They Often Make For Good First Drafts.

She Spent An Afternoon Staring At Their Front Door. Waiting For Someone? Yankel Asked. What Color Is This? He Stood Very Close To The Door, Letting The End Of His Nose Touch The Peephole. He Licked The Wood And Joked, It Certainly Tastes Like Red. Yes, It Is Red, Isn't It? Seems So. She Buried Her Head In Her Hands. But Couldn't It Be Just A Bit More Red?

Feeding My Children Is Not Like Feeding Myself: It Matters More.

Things Were Happening Around Us, But Nothing Was Happening Between Us.

...people With Nothing To Declare Carry The Most.

And Nothing Inspires As Much Shame As Being A Parent. Children Confront Us With Our Paradoxes And Hypocrisies, And We Are Exposed. You Need To Find An Answer For Every Why — Why Do We Do This? Why Don’t We Do That? — And Often There Isn’t A Good One. So You Say, Simply, Because. Or You Tell A Story That You Know Isn’t True. And Whether Or Not Your Face Reddens, You Blush. The Shame Of Parenthood — Which Is A Good Shame — Is That We Want Our Children To Be More Whole Than We Are, To Have Satisfactory Answers.

Everything I Did, I Did Because I Thought It Was The Correct Thing To Do… I Am Not A Hero, It Is True… But I Am Not A Bad Person, Either.

Silently The Animal Catches Our Glance. The Animal Looks At Us, And Whether We Look Away (from The Animal, Our Plate, Our Concern, Ourselves) Or Not, We Are Exposed. Whether We Change Our Lives Or Do Nothing, We Have Responded. To Do Nothing Is To Do Something

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