Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

The most impressive, fascinating, beautiful, illuminated and even funny story about a nine-year-old boy, Oskar, who is an inventor, amateur detective, letter-writer to Stephen Hawking, whose dad died in World Trade Center by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in New York City. With the mysterious key belonged to his dad which got him in very heavy boots, Oskar struggled to find the open of 162 millions lockers in New York and meet many complete strangers who have the same last name, Black. Oskar Schells was finding his died father, Thomas Schells, just like when Thomas himself used to find his long lost leaving father who has the same name, Thomas Schells too.

That's very fascinating. The way author told the story and the style of the story's writing are really brilliant and intelligent. There are many sentences I like and I have quoted and noted. I also like the way the author used 'Heavy boots', "Lighter boots' and 'One hundred dollars!' to express the character's moods.

Here are some quotes I like the most:

"What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heart-beat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited, your skin would turn green, and if you were angry, you’d turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake, you’d turn brown, and if you were blue, you’d turn blue? Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you’d never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you’re angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, ‘Congratulations!’"

"No, that’s not it, it’s not about my joy, the relief of my burden. I like to see people reunited, maybe that’s a silly things but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and 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 the change, I like hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone, I sit on the side with a coffee and write in my day book, I examine the flight schedules that I’ve already memorized, I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn’t mine, and the end of the day, I fill the suitcase with old news. "

"When I no longer had to be strong in front of you, I become very weak. I brought myself to the ground, which was where I belonged. I hit the floor with my fists. I wanted to break my hands, but when it hurt too much, I stopped. I was too selfish to break my hands for my only child. "

"The longer your mother and I lived together, the more we took each other’s assumptions for granted, the less was said, the more misunderstood, I’d often remember having designated a space as Nothing when she sure we had agreed that is was Something, our unspoken agreements led to disagreements, to suffering… "

"'I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.'"

"I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."

"She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.' 'You don't do that anymore?' 'There are questions I don't ask anymore.'"

"I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want."

"Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the Earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore?"

"I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things."

"There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself"

"I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live."

"When you look up 'hilarious' in the dictionary, there's a picture of you."

"The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering."

"...Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]..."

"The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into."

"There is nothing wrong with compromising. Even if you compromise almost everything."

"I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood."

"Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse."

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There is the last sentence which I don’t like but I also like, which I disagree but I also agree which is: "He had a wall of mask from every country he’d been to, like Armenia and Chile and Ethiopia. ‘It’s not a horrible world,’ he told me, putting a Cambodian mask on his face, ‘but it’s filled with a lot of horrible people!’"

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For all the collected quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer, you just can simply click here to get.