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...there Are Only Some Many Times You Can Utter "it Does Not Hurt" Before It Begins To Hurt Even More Than The Hurt.
-Jonathan Safran Foer
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...there Are Only Some

Jonathan Safran Foer
...
...there Are Only Some Many Times You Can Utter "it Does Not Hurt" Before It Begins To Hurt Even More Than The Hurt.

Understanding the Quote: "...there are only some many times you can utter "it does not..."

This quote by Jonathan Safran Foer reflects deeply on the theme of hurt. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Hurt, Doe, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Jonathan Safran Foer interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is celebrated for insightful thoughts on hurt and doe. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Hurt
Doe
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It Is Not A Thing That You Can Imagine. It Only Is. After That, There Can Be No Imagining.
Imagine
Raising Your Kids Vegetarian Is A Great Way To Encourage Them To Do The Opposite Of What You Want! But The Goal Is Not To Have Them Have The Same Values That I Have. It's To Have Them Act On Their Values.
Kids
Opposites
Goal
We All Choose Things, And We Also All Choose Against Things. I Want To Be The Kind Of Person Who Chooses For More Than Chooses Against.
Want
Kind
Persons
We Need A Better Way To Talk About Eating Animals. We Need A Way That Brings Meat To The Center Of Public Discussion In The Same Way It Is Often At The Center Of Our Plates. This Doesn't Require That We Pretend We Are Going To Have A Collective Agreement. However Strong Our Intuitions Are About What's Right For Us Personally And Even About What's Right For Others, We All Know In Advance That Our Positions Will Clash With Those Of Our Neighbors. What Do We Do With That Most Inevitable Reality? Drop The Conversation, Or Find A Way To Reframe It?
Strong
Reality
Animal
The Philosopher Elaine Scarry Has Observed That "beauty Always Takes Place In The Particular." Cruelty, On The Other Hand, Prefers Abstraction.
Hands
Philosopher
Cruelty
I Got Incredibly Heavy Boots About How Relatively Insignificant Life Is, And How, Compared To The Universe And Compared To Time, It Didn’t Even Matter If I Existed At All.
Boots
Matter
Life Is
What Were We Spending So Much Time Doing If Not Getting To Know Each Other?
Spending
Getting To Know Each Other
Knows
Perhaps In The Back Of Our Minds We Already Understand, Without All The Science I've Discussed, That Something Terribly Wrong Is Happening. Our Sustenance Now Comes From Misery. We Know That If Someone Offers To Show Us A Film On How Our Meat Is Produced, It Will Be A Horror Film. We Perhaps Know More Than We Care To Admit, Keeping It Down In The Dark Places Of Our Memory-- Disavowed. When We Eat Factory-farmed Meat We Live, Literally, On Tortured Flesh. Increasingly, That Tortured Flesh Is Becoming Our Own.
Memories
Dark
Science
Most Of The Times That I Think About My Relationship To Judaism, I Not Only Accuse Myself Of A Shallowness, But I Feel Certain That There's A Shallowness There. That's Not A Bad Thing, Really.
Thinking
Judaism
Shallowness
August Has Passed, And Yet Summer Continues By Force To Grow Days. They Sprout Secretly Between The Chapters Of The Year, Covertly Included Between Its Pages.
Summer
August
Years
The End Of Suffering Does Not Justify The Suffering, And So There Is No End To Suffering.
Suffering
Doe
Ends
One Day You Will Do Things For Me That You Hate. That Is What It Means To Be Family.
Family
Hate
Mean
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.
Hero
Things To Do
Persons
There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.
People
Understanding
Understanding Yourself
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.
Missing
Problem
I Missed You
It's True, I Am Afraid Of Dying. I Am Afraid Of The World Moving Forward Without Me, Of My Absence Going Unnoticed, Or Worse, Being Some Natural Force Propelling Life On. Is It Selfish? Am I Such A Bad Person For Dreaming Of A World That Ends When I Do? I Don't Mean The World Ending With Respect To Me, But Every Set Of Eyes Closing With Mine.
Death
Dream
Selfish
In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone. There Was No Invention To Get Around That, And So I Felt, That Night, Like The Turtle That Everything Else In The Universe Was On Top Of.
Night
Turtles
Invention
The Paper, The Stapler, The Staples, The Tape. It Makes Me Sick. Physical Things. Forty Years Of Loving Someone Becomes Staples And Tape.
Years
Loving Someone
Sick
Family Are The People Who Must Make You Feel Ashamed When You Are Deserving Of Shame.
People
Shame
Feels
I'm Not Better Than Anyone, And I'm Not Trying To Convince People To Live By My Standards Of What's Right. I'm Trying To Convince Them To Live By Their Own.
People
Trying
Standards
I Often Think About How My Sons Will Come To Know About September 11th. Something Overheard? A Newspaper Image? In School? I Would Prefer That They Learn About It From My Wife And Me, In A Deliberate And Safe Way. But It's Hard To Imagine Ever Feeling Ready To Broach The Subject Without Some Impetus.
School
Son
Thinking
It Was Terrible. All Of The Things We Couldn't Share. The Room Was Filled With Conversations We Weren't Having.
Rooms
Share
Conversation
I Want To Talk About God In A Literary Way. But I Think I Would Have A Very Hard Time Praying To God.
Hard Times
Thinking
Want
The Disgraced Usurer Yankel D Took The Baby Girl Home That Evening... He Made A Bed Of Crumpled Newspaper In A Deep Baking Pan And Gently Tucked It In The Oven, So That She Wouldn't Be Disturbed By The Noise Of The Small Falls Outside... When He Pulled Her Out To Feed Her Or Just Hold Her, Her Body Was Tattooed With The Newsprint... Sometimes He Would Rock Her To Sleep In His Arms, And Read Her Left To Right, And Know Everything He Needed To Know About The World. If It Wasn't Written On Her, It Wasn't Important To Him.
Girl
Baby
Fall
I Hope That One Day You Will Have The Experience Of Doing Something You Do Not Understand For Someone You Love.
One Day
Someone You Love
The American Dream Itself Is Declining.
Dream
American Dream
I Felt, That Night, On That Stage, Under That Skull, Incredibly Close To Everything In The Universe, But Also Extremely Alone.
Night
Skulls
Loud
Writing's Funny, It's Like Walking Down A Hall In The Dark Looking For The Light Switch, And Suddenly You Find It, Flip It On, And Then You Discover The Hallway You Passed Through Is Papered With The Novel You've Written.
Writing
Dark
Light
And She Would Say, "today You Believe In God?" And He Would Say, "today I Believe In Love".
Believe
Today
I Believe
I'm A Vegetarian. You're A What? I Don't Eat Meat. How Can You Not Eat Meat? I Just Don't. He Says He Does Not Eat Meat. What? No Meat? No Meat. Steak? No... Chickens! No... And What About The Sausage? No, No Sausage, No Meat! He Says He Does Not Eat Any Meat. Not Even Sausage? I Know! What Is Wrong With Him? What Is Wrong With You? Nothing, I Just Don't Eat Meat!
Meat
Doe
Sausage
But What She Was Really Trying To Say Was This: I Like Music Better Than Anything In The World, After You.
Trying
World
This Isn't Animal Experimentation, Where You An Imagine Some Proportionate Good At The Other End Of The Suffering. This Is What We Feel Like Eating. Tell Me Something: Why Is Taste, The Crudest Of Our Sense, Exempted From The Ethical Rules That Govern Our Other Sense? If You Stop And Think About It, It's Crazy. Why Doesn't A Horny Person Has As Strong A Claim To Raping An Animal As A Hungry One Does To Killing And Eating It?
Strong
Crazy
Animal
She Said, "do You Have More Things That You Need, Or More That You Don't Need?" I Said, "it Depends On What It Means To Need.
Mean
Needs
Said
We Could Imagine All Sorts Of Universes Unlike This One, But This Is The One That Happened.
Imagine
Happened
Universe
We Cracked Up Together, Which Was Necessary, Because She Loved Me Again.
Together
Cracked
It's The Tragedy Of Loving, You Can't Love Anything More Than Something You Miss.
I Hate You
Loving You
Missing
Why Didn't He Say Goodbye? I Gave Myself A Bruise. Why Didn't He Say 'i Love You'?
Goodbye
Love You
Bruises
When You Look Up 'hilarious' In The Dictionary, There's A Picture Of You.
Looks
Look Up
Dictionary
People Who Care About Animals Tend To Care About People. They Don't Care About Animals To The Exclusion Of People. Caring Is Not A Finite Resource And, Even More Than That, It's Like A Muscle: The More You Exercise It, The Stronger It Gets.
Exercise
Caring
Animal
I Desperately Wish I Had My Tambourine With Me Now, Because Even After Everything I'm Still Wearing Heavy Boots, And Sometimes It Helps To Play A Good Beat
Play
Wish
Boots
Jed Perl Writes Precisely And Ecstatically. Antoine' S Alphabet Is A History And A Fairy Tale, A Work Of Criticism, And A Work Of Art.
Art
Writing
Criticism
I Tried The Key In All The Doors, Even Though He Said He Didn't Recognize It. It's Not That I Didn't Trust Him, Becuase I Did. It's That At The End Of My Search I Wanted To Be Able To Say: I Don't Know How I Could Have Tried Harder.
Keys
Doors
Able
What If I Never Stop Inventing?
What If
Inventing
Ifs
None Of The Ways People Were Talking About September 11 Felt Right To Me. I Don't Buy Into The Way George W. Bush Talks About It. I Don't Buy Into The Way The 9/11 Commission Talks About It. It Isn't That I Don't Believe Them. It's Just That They're Not The Tellings For Me.
Believe
Talking
People
Anyway, The Fascinating Thing Was That I Read In National Geographic That There Are More People Alive Now Than Have Died In All Of Human History. In Other Words, If Everyone Wanted To Play Hamlet At Once, They Couldn’t, Because There Aren’t Enough Skulls!
Play
Skulls
People
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.
Mean
Thinking
Blind Spots
For A Long Time, I Thought I Would Like To Be A Doctor. Such A Good Profession. So Explicitly Good. Never A Waste Of Time.
Doctors
Long
Waste
I Wanted To Protect Him, Which I Was Sure I Could Do, Even If I Could Not Protect Myself.
Protect
Wanted
Ifs
We Live In A World Made Up More Of Story Than Stuff. We Are Creatures Of Memory More Than Reminders, Of Love More Than Likes.
Memories
World
Stuff
If There Is No Love In The World, We Will Make A New World, And We Will Give It Walls, And We Will Furnish It With Soft Red Interiors, From The Inside Out, And Give It A Knocker That Resonates Like A Diamond Falling To A Jeweller's Felt So That We Should Never Hear It. Love Me, Because Love Doesn't Exist, And I Have Tried Everything That Does.
Love
Wall
Fall
We Are Not Long-term Beings. Not Heroes Of Romances In Many Volumes. For One Gesture, For One Word Alone, We Shall Make The Effort. We Openly Admit: Our Creations Will Be Temporary. We Shall Have This As Our Aim: A Gesture.
Hero
Long
Effort
I Know You Look Both Ways Before You Cross The Street, But I Want You To Look Both Ways A Second Time, Because I Told You To.
Looks
Want
Way
My Boots Were So Heavy That I Was Glad There Was A Column Beneath Us. How Could Such A Lonely Person Have Been Living So Close To Me My Whole Life? If I Had Known, I Would Have Gone Up To Keep Him Company.
Lonely
Gone
Boots
We Can't Plead Ignorance, Only Indifference. Those Alive Today Are The Generations That Came To Know Better. We Have The Burden And The Opportunity Of Living In The Moment When The Critique Of Factory Farming Broke Into The Popular Consciousness. We Are The Ones Of Whom It Will Be Fairly Asked, What Did You Do When You Learned The Truth About Eating Animals?
Ignorance
Opportunity
Animal
Just How Destructive Does A Culinary Preference Have To Be Before We Decide To Eat Something Else? If Contributing To The Suffering Of Billions Of Animals That Live Miserable Lives And (quite Often) Die In Horrific Ways Isn't Motivating, What Would Be? If Being The Number One Contributor To The Most Serious Threat Facing The Planet (global Warming) Isn't Enough, What Is? And If You Are Tempted To Put Off These Questions Of Conscience, To Say Not Now, Then When?
Animal
Numbers
Suffering
Just Because You're An Atheist, That Doesn't Mean You Wouldn't Love For Things To Have Reasons For Why They Are.
Atheist
Mean
Reason
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.
Two
Tragedy
Shame
Murdering Someone Would Surely Prove That You Are Capable Of Killing, But It Wouldn't Be The Most Reasonable Way To Understand Why You Shouldn't Do It.
Way
Vegan
Killing
What Is Being Awake If Not Interpreting Our Dreams, Or Dreaming If Not Interpreting Our Wake?
Dream
Awake
Interpreting
Only Now Do I Understand The War Against Boredom, The Lost Cause Of Empty Hours, Of Empty Days And Nights.
War
Night
Boredom
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.
Order
Racism
Decision
The Animals Are Those Things That God Likes But Doesn't Love.
Animal
Likes
I Flipped Back Through The Pad Of Paper While I Thought About What Stephen Hawking Would Do Next.
Paper
Next
Pads
It Is Better To Lose Than Never To Have Had.
Loses
I Wanted To Hit Him. I Wanted To Hold Him. I Wanted To Shout Myself Into His Ear.
Ears
Wanted
Flea-market Vendors Are Frozen Mid-haggle. Middle-aged Women Are Frozen In The Middle Of Their Lives. The Gavels Of Frozen Judges Are Frozen Between Guilt And Innocence. On The Ground Are The Crystals Of The Frozen First Breaths Of Babies, And Those Of The Last Gasps Of The Dying.
Baby
Judging
Guilt
I Hated Myself For Going, Why Couldn't I Be The Kind Of Person Who Stays?
Kind
Hated
Persons
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