AtomicQuote

Jonathan Safran Foer Quote

Before they had kids, if asked to conjure images of parenthood they would have said things like Reading in bed, and Giving a bath, and Running while holding the seat of a bicycle. Parenthood contains such moments of warmth and intimacy, but isn't them. It's cleaning up. The great bulk of family life involves no exchange of love, and no meaning, only fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of feeling fulfilled, but of fulfilling that which now falls to you.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Before they had kids, if asked to conjure images of parenthood they would have said things like Reading in bed, and Giving a bath, and Running while holding the seat of a bicycle. Parenthood contains such moments of warmth and intimacy, but isn't them. It's cleaning up. The great bulk of family life involves no exchange of love, and no meaning, only fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of feeling fulfilled, but of fulfilling that which now falls to you.

Tags: meaning, parenthood

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About Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer (; born February 21, 1977) is an American novelist. He is known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), Here I Am (2016), and for his non-fiction works Eating Animals (2009) and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). He teaches creative writing at New York University.