We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music transcends language barriers, allowing for a form of communication that avoids misunderstandings.
In this quote, Jonathan Safran Foer reflects on the limitations of conventional language and suggests that music, as a universal form of expression, can convey emotions and ideas without ambiguity. He emphasizes the need for a new mode of communication that can articulate human experiences more accurately than words, which often fall short and lend themselves to misinterpretation.
Themes
CommunicationMusicUnderstandingLanguageExpression
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on the power of art, this quote could be used to emphasize how music communicates emotions.
More from Jonathan Safran Foer
All quotes →Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
Similar quotes
Speech is the voice of the heart.
Anna QuindlenRead
The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.
Charlotte BronteRead
The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation.
Sam HarrisRead
Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication
Groucho MarxRead
I've found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they're communicating but it tells you a great deal - by dialect and tone, content and circumstance - about the quality of the character.
E. O. WilsonRead
So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
Theodore ZeldinRead