Yankel Quotes & Sayings

The Spirit of Cities presents a new approach to the study of cities in which the focus is placed on a city's defining ethos or values. The style of the book is attractively conversational and even autobiographical, and far from current social science positivism. For a lover of cities
and perhaps even for one who is not
The Spirit of Cities is consistently good reading. — Nathan Glazer

She spent an afternoon staring at their front door.
Waiting for someone? Yankel asked.
What color is this?
He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked, It certainly tastes like red.
Yes, it is red, isn't it?
Seems so.
She buried her head in her hands. But couldn't it be just a bit more red? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Small children believe themselves to be gods, or some of them do, and they can only be satisfied when the rest of the world goes along with their way of seeing things. — Neil Gaiman

The disgraced Usurer Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening ... He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the oven, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside ... When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint ... Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him. — Jonathan Safran Foer

For loss is what we live with all the time. / None knows this better than the mind should know, the mind / that wanders, and cannot tell our name, itself / all seeds and survivals, little else, poor blind. — William Bronk

Suddenly Yankel was overcome with a fear of dying, stronger than he felt when his parents passed of natural causes, stronger than when his only brother was killed in the flour mill or when his children died, stronger even than when he was a child and it first occurred to him that he must try to understand what it could mean not to be alive
to be not in darkness, not in unfeeling
to be not being, not to be. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The horse at the bottom of the river, shrouded by the sunken night sky, closed its heavy eyes. The prehistoric ant in Yankel's ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame. — Jonathan Safran Foer

You're impossible, Yankel! I'm possibly possible. Thank you, she said, — Jonathan Safran Foer

God, would you just come here, Kate? I'll behave, I promise. It wrecks me to see you cry and not be able to hold you. Or if you can't do that, go to him and let him hold you. I'm making a bloody mess of everything. — Rysa Walker

Her learning to sew (from a book Yankel brought back from Lvov) coincided with her refusal to wear any clothes that she did not make for herself, and when he bought her a book about animal physiology, she held the pictures to his face and said, "Don't you think it's strange, Yankel, how we eat them?"
"I've never eaten a picture."
"The animals. Don't you find that strange? I can't believe I never found it strange before. It's like your name, how you don't notice it for so long, but when you finally do, you can't help but say it over and over, and wonder why you never thought it was strange that you should have that name, and that everyone has been calling you that name for your whole life."
"Yankel. Yankel. Yankel. Nothing so strange for me."
"I won't eat them, at least not until it doesn't seem strange to me. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him. — Jonathan Safran Foer

skidded to the other side and disappeared into the pines. Pelt bristling, eyes wide, Snowfur streaked after them, over the oily Thunderpath. Bluefur froze. A monster was roaring straight at Snowfur. Without slowing down, it slammed into her body. Bluefur heard the dull thump, then the howl of the monster as it thundered away, leaving Snowfur's body lying like a wet leaf at the edge of the Thunderpath. "No! — Erin Hunter

Hearts united in pain and sorrow
will not be separated by joy and happiness.
Bonds that are woven in sadness
are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.
Love that is washed by tears
will remain eternally pure and faithful. — Kahlil Gibran

I'll always protect what I'm working on. Which is why more and more of it is stuff only I can ruin. — Joss Whedon

Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight. — Samuel Smiles

I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it. — Tommy Lasorda

The amount of sophistication varies according to the quality of the medium, and to the state of the same medium at different times; it must be attributed in the best cases physiologically to the medium, intellectually to the control. — Oliver Joseph Lodge

Plastic surgeons are not famous for their whimsicality. If they were, we'd all have faces like Valentino's. And cocks like Lyle's. — Richard Stevenson

It was inevitable: Yankel fell in love with his never-wife. He would wake from sleep to miss the weight that never depressed the bed next to him, remember in earnest the weight of gestures she never made, long for the un-weight of her un-arm slung over his too-real chest, making his widower's rememberences that much more convincing and his pain that much more real. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Life was anything but fast, in your opinion. If it went any more slowly, time would probably start to run backward. — Rebecca Stead