Tree of Codes Quotes

“How beautiful is forgetting! What relief it would be for the world to lose some of its contents.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“And yet and yet - the last secret of the tree of codes is that nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Nowhere as much as there do we feel possibilities shaken by the nearness of realization. The atmosphere becomes possibilities and we shall wander and make a thousand mistakes. We shall wander along yet not be able to understand.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“Yesterday I wanted to turn inside out.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“There is no dead matter,” he taught us, “lifelessness is only a disguise” his voice sank pressed against the wall, “We have lived for too long. We wish. We wish; we want, we want we want We are not,” he said, “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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“But the future lay open, a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities with a small quick heartbeat, delicate and impatient”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look though your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways?

Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis?

Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has been irrevocably spoiled for you?

If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness of ravens”?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“I was thankful," said my father, "for the make-believe.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“desperately knocking against the blind little world, i loosened one of its planks, opening a window to a new, wider world. There, spread out, was a profusion of geography, of atmosphere, of full empty air.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“The appearance was misleading- human dreams; rubbish heaps abundant yet ephemeral sudden and splendid, only to wilt and perish”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“That ghost of a smile fell away and receded and finally faded.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“faces pressed against the pane, full of little, content with sawdust tears.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“My father's face, when he said that, dissolved into a stillness, a sad expression, sadder than human feeling.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes

“Yet we wanted human feeling, gestures free from suspicion, some sympathetic if stammering articulation, half syllables of mystification, a temporary eternal.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes