Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close

Há uma coisa incrivelmente maravilhosa que quero preservar. O pai costumava sempre ir deitar-me, contava-me as histórias mais maravilhosas do mundo, líamos juntos o The New York Times e às vezes ele assobiava "I am the Walrus", porque era a sua canção favorita, embora não soubesse explicar o que significava, o que me deixava frustrado. Uma coisa fantástica era ele conseguir encontrar um erro em cada artigo que líamos. Às vezes eram erros de gramática, outras eram erros de geografia ou relativos a factos e outras, ainda, o artigo não contava a história toda. Adorava ter um pai que era mais esperto que o The New York Times e adorava sentir na cara os pêlos do peito dele através da t-shirt e o perfume agradável da loção para depois da barba a que ele cheirava sempre, mesmo ao fim do dia. Estar com ele acalmava-me o cérebro. Não precisava de inventar nada."

(Por razões várias, decidimos nunca ler nenhum livro nem ver nenhum filme sobre o 11 de Setembro. Abrimos uma vez uma excepção para um documentário e agora outra excepção para este livro. Porque já tínhamos tropeçado nele tantas vezes que não podíamos continuar a evitá-lo. É evidente que tinha de haver uma boa razão.)

X

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.

Jonathan Safran Foer

II

There was a single thought in my head: keep thinking.

Thinking would keep me alive.

But now i am alive,
and thinking is killing me.

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close (VI)

"We slept in the same bed. 

There was never a right time to say it. 

It was always unnecessary. 

The books in my father's shed were sighing. 

The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing. 

I thought about waking her. 

but it was unnecessary. 

There would be other nights. 

And how can you say I love you to someone you love? 

I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. 

Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you... 

It's always necessary. 

I love you..." 

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close (V)

"I love you also means i love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, i love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, i love you in a way that i love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else... It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss." 

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close (IV)

"I'm so afraid of losing something I love, that I refuse to love anything... Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future. I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live... I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things." 

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close (III)

"There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me... I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love... This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?" 

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close (II)

“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, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely loud and incredibly close (I)

"I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, i am not sad. As if the might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others - the only thing worse that being sad is for others to know that you are sad. Im am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."