“What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or justcrack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, “Ce n’étais pas moi!”What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboard down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.”

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About Jonathan Safran Foer

American novelist

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American novelist and writer. He is associated with contemporary American fiction and has 239 quotes on the site. He is known for the novels Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and Here I Am, as well as the non-fiction works Eating Animals and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. He also teaches creative writing at New York University. His writing often moves between fiction and nonfiction, with attention to family, memory, and environmental concern.

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Books by Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything Is Illuminated

2003

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

2006

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Here I Am

2017

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Eating animals

2009

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