Quotations from *Everything Is Illuminated*, 1 of 2
Jonathan Safran Foer
1977- American

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness.
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else.
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

She spent an afternoon staring at their front door.
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated