"... I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything"

(Image source:  Elina Nilsson)

Favourite quotes from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 

by Jonathan Safran Foer

"I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone." 

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

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness." 

"... 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." 

"So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!" 

"There were things I wanted to tell him. But I know they would hurt him. So i buried them, and let them hurt me."

"I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times and never once into it."

"Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war." 

What's your favourite quote?