“The world is a big place," he said, "but so is the inside of an apartment!”

“She hid these things in the forest so that she could find them when she returned, and then she went forth." "Where?" "Places." "Where?" "Russia. Other places." "Then?" "Then she returned." "Why?" "To gather the things she had hidden, and to discover what remained. Everyone who went back was certain that she would discover her house and her friends and even the relatives that she saw killed. It is said that the Messiah will come at the end of the world." "But it was not the end of the world," Grandfather said. "It was. He just did not come." "Why did he not come?" "This is the lesson we learned from everything that happened -- there is no God. It took all of the hidden faces for Him to prove this to us." "What if it was a challenge of your faith?" I said. "I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this." "What if it was not in His power?" "I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened." "What if it was man and not God that did all of this?" "I do not believe in man, either.”

“Only a few months into our marriage," writes the grandfather, "we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist.”

“If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.”

“If there's no love in the world, we will make a new world and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.”

“I went to the lobby and asked Stan what he knew about the person who lived in 6A. He said 'Never seen anyone go in or come out. Just a lot of deliveries and a lot of trash.''Cool'. He leaned down and whispered 'Haunted'.I whispered back 'I don't believe in the paranormal'.He said 'Ghosts don't care if you believe in them'.I walked back up the steps, this time past our floor and to the sixth. There was a mat in front of the door which said 'welcome' in twelve different languages. That didn't seem like something a ghost would put in front of his apartment."― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

“I said, 'I need to know how he died.'He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?'So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.”