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Every time I left our apartment to go searching for the lock, I became a little lighter, because I was getting closer to Dad. But I also became a little heavier, because I was getting farther from Mom. By Jonathan Safran Foer Dad Lock Lighter Time Left

A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter. By Jonathan Safran Foer Day Letters Weeks Worst Started

You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you. By Jonathan Safran Foer Understood Whisper Person

It was on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest of holy days, that a fly flew under the door of the synagogue and began to pester the hanging congregants. It flew from face to face, buzzing, landing on long noses, going in and out of hairy ears. AND IF THIS IS ATEST, the Venerable Rabbi enlightened, trying to keep his congregationtogether, SHOULD WE NOT RISE TO ITS CHALLENGE? AND I URGE YOU: CRASH TO THE GROUND BEFORE YOU RELEASE THE GREAT BOOK!But how pestering that fly was, tickling some of the most ticklish places. AND AS GOD ASKED ABRAHAM TO SHOW ISAAC THE KNIFE'S POINT, SO IS HE ASKING US NOT TO SCRATCH OUR ASSES! AND IF WE MUST, BY ALL MEANS WITH THE LEFT HAND! By Jonathan Safran Foer Kippur Yom Flew Days Congregants

I love you' means that I accept you for the person that you are, and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you're in a bad mood, or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you're down, not just when you're fun to be with. 'I love you' means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. It means thinking of you, dreaming of you, wanting and needing you constantly, and hoping you feel the same way for me By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Accept Person Change Loving

When I was nine, I had a babysitter who didn't want to hurt anything. She put it just like that when I asked her why she wasn't having chicken with my older brother and me: "I don't want to hurt anything." [ ... ] What our babysitter said made sense to me, not only because it seemed true, but because it was the extension to food of everything my parents had taught me. We don't hurt family members. We don't hurt friends or strangers. We don't even hurt upholstered furniture. My not having thought to include animals in that list didn't make them the exceptions to it. It just made me a child, ignorant of the world's workings. Until I wasn't. At which point I had to change my life. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hurt Babysitter Made Put Asked

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? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls "the National Geographic." She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it's too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa's camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. She said, "Maybe he wanted you to have it." I said, "But I was negative-thirty years old." She said, "Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls! By Jonathan Safran Foer National Geographic Gave Size Anymore

He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid. By Jonathan Safran Foer Person Special Love Write Loved

Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It's almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed. By Jonathan Safran Foer Amazon Apple Writers Putting Total

I pointed at, Something.He pointed at, Nothing.I pointed at, Something.Nobody pointed at, I love you.There was no way around it. We could not climb over it, or walk until we found its edge.I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently.I would change my life.I would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me.I would jump with Mary on the bed, even if I made a fool of myself.I would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them. By Jonathan Safran Foer Pointed Somethinghe Nothingi Somethingnobody Oskar

I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet.Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, 'Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open.'I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on?I wish I had made things for life to depend on. By Jonathan Safran Foer Life Poet Depends Depend Universe

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. society didn't ban child labor because it's impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it's corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. By Jonathan Safran Foer Corrupting Child Labor Laws Employees

However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sense of the word. And we know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power. Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voicelessit is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. By Jonathan Safran Foer Factory Farm Word Obfuscate Ignore

I have been waiting for you for so long."I pointed to the car. "We are searching for Trachimbrod.""Oh," she said and she released a river of tears. "You are here. I am it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Long Car Waiting Pointed Trachimbrod

Closeness,' he said, surveying the congregation. 'It's easy to be close, but almost impossible to stay close. Think about friends. Think about hobbies. Even ideas. They're close to us--sometimes so close we think they are part of us--and then, at some point, they aren't close anymore. They go away. Only one thing can keep something close over time: holding it there. Grappling with it. Wrestling it to the ground, as Jacob did with the angel, and refusing to let go. What we don't wrestle we let go of. Love isn't the absence of struggle. Love is struggle.' That sounded like the person I wanted to be, but couldn't be. It sounded like Max. By Jonathan Safran Foer Close Closeness Surveying Congregation Love

We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals? By Jonathan Safran Foer Ignorance Indifference Plead Alive Today

(You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.)(You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.)(And you are deserving of shame?)(I am. I am trying to tell you.) 'We were stupid,' he said, 'because we believed in things.''Why is this stupid?''Because there are not things to believe in.'(Love?)(There is no love. Only the end of love.)(Goodness?)(Do not be a fool.)(God?)(If God exists, He is not to be believed in.) By Jonathan Safran Foer Family People Make Feel Ashamed

I said, I want to tell you something.She said, you can tell me tomorrow.I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. The books in my father's shed were sighing. The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you ... It's always necessary. By Jonathan Safran Foer Somethingshe Tomorrowi Told Loved Unnecessary

I know a lot about birds and bees, but I don't know very much about the birds and the bees. Everything I do know I had to teach myself on the Internet, because I don't have anyone to ask. For example, I know that you give someone a blowjob by putting your penis in their mouth. By Jonathan Safran Foer Bees Birds Lot Internet Teach

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.Foer, Jonathan Safran (2006-04-04). Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel (Kindle Locations 1882-1883). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition. By Jonathan Safran Foer Kindle Spent Life Learning Feel

Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity. By Jonathan Safran Foer Food Rational Habit Culture Craving

Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable - the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction. By Jonathan Safran Foer Food Purposes Remember Serves Parallel

They loved each other's company, and would always choose it over either aloneness or the company of anyone else, but the more comfort they found together, the more life they shared, the more estranged they became from their inner lives. In By Jonathan Safran Foer Company Shared Lives Loved Choose

Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Morning Grieving Sleep Breakfast

Let's go to bed. Those four words differentiate a marriage from every other kind of relationship. We aren't going to find a way to agree, but let's go to bed. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We hate each other right now, but let's go to bed. It's the only one we have. Let's go to our sides, but the sides of the same bed. Let's retreat into ourselves, but together. How many conversations had ended with those four words? How many fights? By Jonathan Safran Foer Bed Words Sides Relationship Differentiate

Young friends, whose string-and-tin-can phone extended from island to island, had to pay out more and more string, as if letting kites go higher and higher. They had more and more to tell each other, and less and less string. The boy asked the girl to say "I love you" into her can, giving her no further explanation. And she didn't ask for any, or say "That's silly," or "We're too young for love," or even suggest that she was saying "I love you" because he asked her to. Instead she said, "I love you." The words traveled through the long, long string. The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put her love for him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he never could open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough just to know it was there. By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Island Higher String Friends

It is best if the guard is in love with America and wants to overawe the American by being a premium guard. This kind of guard thinks that he will encounter the American again one day in America, and that the American will offer to take him to a Chicago Bulls game, and buy him blue jeans and whitebread and delicate toilet paper. This guard dreams of speaking Englishwithout an accent and obtaining a wife with an unmalleable bosom. This guard will confess that he does not love where he lives.The other kind of guard is also in love with America, but he will hate the American for being an American. This is worst. This guard knows he will never go to America, and knows that he will never meet the American again. He will steal from the American, and terror the American, only to teach that he can. By Jonathan Safran Foer American America Guard Love Chicago

There's a difference, I'm sure you realize, between prevalence and importance." "I'm sure you realize that I don't even know what prevalence means." "Kanye West is not more culturally important than - " "Yes he is." " - than Philip Roth." "First of all, I've never even heard of that person. Second, Kanye might not be valuable to you, but he's definitely more important to the world. By Jonathan Safran Foer Kanye Realize Difference Importance Prevalence

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty. By Jonathan Safran Foer Feeling Needed Empty Completeness

Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: brought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every morning, shaved his face until the hair stopped growing, took him faithfully to bed with her every night, whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left him everything in her will, thought of only him as she died, always knew he was fiction but believed in him anyway. By Jonathan Safran Foer Left Brought Chair Changed Morning

I'm here, Dr. Fein, because it upsets my mom that I'm having an impossible time with my life." "Should it upset her?" "Not really. Life is impossible. By Jonathan Safran Foer Fein Mom Time Impossible Life

From where she is, the page- her paper-thin future-is infinitely heavy. By Jonathan Safran Foer Page Heavy Paperthin Futureis Infinitely

How many times, in those first weeks, did he enter the room and stand by the door, unable to speak? How many times did she ask, "Do you need anything?"And he would say, "No."And she would say "Are you sure?"And he would say, "Yes," but think, Ask again.And she would say, "I know," but think, Come to me.And he would say , "Ask again."And she would say, "Come to me."And saying nothing, he would.There they would be, side by side, her hand on his thigh, his head resting on her chest. If they had been teenagers, it would have looked like the beginning of love, but they'd been married for twenty years, and it was the exhumation of love. By Jonathan Safran Foer Times Weeks Door Unable Speak

It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals. By Jonathan Safran Foer Cruel Kind Sustainable Destructive Consumer

Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written. By Jonathan Safran Foer Writing Funny Switch Flip Written

Touch had always saved them in the past. No matter the anger or hurt, no matter the depth of the aloneness, a touch, even a light and passing touch, reminded them of their long togetherness. A palm on a neck: it all flooded back. A head leaned upon a shoulder: the chemicals surged, the memory of love. At times, it was almost impossible to cross the distance between their bodies, to reach out. At times, it was impossible. Each new the feeling so well, in the silence of a darkened bedroom, looking at the same ceiling: If I could open my fingers, my heart's fingers could open. By Jonathan Safran Foer Touch Matter Past Saved Times

The UN special envoy on food called it a "crime against humanity" to funnel 100 million tons of grain and corn to ethanol while almost a billion people are starving. So what kind of crime is animal agriculture, which uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty? And that 756 million tons doesn't even include the fact that 98 percent of the 225-million-ton global soy crop is also fed to farmed animals. You're supporting vast inefficiency and pushing up the price of food for the poorest in the world, By Jonathan Safran Foer Million Tons Grain Corn Crime

But he also knew that there is an inflationary aspect to love, and that should his mother, or Rose, or any of those who loved him find out about each other, they would not be able to help but feel of lesser value. He knew that I love you also means, I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will live you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you,and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. He knew that it is, by love's definition, impossible to love two people. By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Loved Rose Knew Loves

Despite all that had been spilled, was the cup still half full? Or did a crumb of Wellbutrin just lodge free from between his brain's teeth, offering a morsel of undigested happiness? The cup was half full enough. Despite By Jonathan Safran Foer Spilled Cup Half Full Wellbutrin

I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? By Jonathan Safran Foer Thought Life Embarrassments Coincidences Tables

Find a printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it. Imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid. (Broilers are never in cages, and never on multiple levels.) Now enclose the grid with windowless walls and put a ceiling on top. Run in automated (drug-laced) feed, water, heating, and ventilation systems. This is a farm. By Jonathan Safran Foer Find Imagine Printer Paper Fullgrown

I'm sure people tell you this constantly, but if you looked up 'incredibly beautiful' in the dictionary, there would be a picture of you." She cracked up a bit and said, "People never tell me that." "I bet they do." She cracked up a bit more. "They don't." "Then you hang out with the wrong people." "You might be right about that." "Because you're incredibly beautiful. By Jonathan Safran Foer People Constantly Dictionary Cracked Beautiful

You can see the most beautiful things from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I read somewhere that people on the street are supposed to look like ants, but that's not true. They look like little people. And the cars look like little cars. And even the buildings look little. It's like New York is a miniature replica of New York, which is nice, because you can see what it's really like, instead of how it feels when you're in the middle of it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Empire State York Beautiful Things

You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist. By Jonathan Safran Foer Beautiful Fat Compliment Sexist Incredibly

This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive. By Jonathan Safran Foer Heart Hand Touching Left Lefthanded

They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge and I will show you things you have never, ever seen. The "M" was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the "eet" from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; the "me" from the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; the "und" from too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; the "er" from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE ... and so on, and so on, each note a collage of love that could never be, and a war that could By Jonathan Safran Foer Children Exchanged War German Germans

When the pages are in the typewriter, I can't see his face.In that way i am choosing you over him.I don't need to see him.I don't need to know if he is looking up at me.It's not even that I trust him not to leave.I know this won't last.I'd rather be me than him.The words are coming so easily.The pages are coming easily.At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed.God brought together the land and the water, the sky and the water, the water and the water, evening and morning, something and nothing.He said, Let there be light.And there was darkness. By Jonathan Safran Foer Pages Himi Coming Eve Water

When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. I'm not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to animals as soon as we had the technological power. Look at what we actually do in the name of "animal welfare" and "humaneness," then decide if you still believe in eating meat. By Jonathan Safran Foer Suffering Corrupting Walk Thinking Greater

Stephen Hawking won't come to Israel? I'm not one to punch a quadriplegic with glasses, but I'm sure he won't mind if we ask for his voice back - you know, the one that was created by Israeli engineers. By Jonathan Safran Foer Israel Hawking Stephen Israeli Glasses

She died in my arms saying, "I don't want to die." That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we could never have war anymore. By Jonathan Safran Foer Die Died Arms Matter Wearing

Do not have any other loves before me in your heart. Do not take my name in vain. Do not kill me. Observe me, and keep me holy. By Jonathan Safran Foer Heart Loves Vain Observe Holy

I don't know how late it got.I probably fell asleep, but I don't remember. I cried so much that everything blurred into everything else. At some point she was carrying me to my room. Then I was in bed. She was looking over me. I don't believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. But it was also incredibly simple. In my only life, she was my mom, and I was her son. By Jonathan Safran Foer Asleep Remember Late Goti Fell

Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.' I read that in a book somewhere and it's stuck in my head. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not true. More likely, the young and the old are lonely in different ways, in their own ways ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Deep Lonelier True Young Head

I'm not mad at you," she said. "Not even a little?" "No." "Do you still love me?" It didn't seem like the perfect time to mention that I had already made copies of the key for the deliverer from Pizza Hut, and the UPS person, and, also the nice guys from Greenpeace, so they could leave me articles on manatees and other animals that are going extinct when Stan is getting coffee. "I've never loved you more. By Jonathan Safran Foer Mad Hut Greenpeace Pizza Ups

I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there. By Jonathan Safran Foer Differently Wanted Lived Love Afraid

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 just crack 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'etre, which is a French expression that I know. By Jonathan Safran Foer Teakettle Shakespeare Yellow Submarine Beatles

Abraham didn't say, "What do you want?" He didn't say, "Yes?" He answered with a statement: "Here I am." Whatever God needs or wants, Abraham is wholly present for Him, without conditions or reservations or need for explanation. By Jonathan Safran Foer Abraham God Statement Explanation Answered

What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat and your body temperature and your brainwaves, so that your skin changed color according to mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you we're angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you'd turn brown and if you we're 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 someone who skin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you'd want to pat a pink person on the back and say, Congratulations! By Jonathan Safran Foer Skin Turn Things Brainwaves Mood

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! By Jonathan Safran Foer Congratulations Person Felt Late Careful

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. By Jonathan Safran Foer Cravings Animals Habits Family Conversation

But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Year Thinking End Sophomore Philosophy

I'm grateful for anything that reminds me of what's possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It's so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared. By Jonathan Safran Foer Life Grateful Reminds Books Films

Wings of a half finished book across his chest. By Jonathan Safran Foer Wings Chest Half Finished Book

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? By Jonathan Safran Foer Spent Afternoon Staring Front Doorwaiting

I started inventing things, and then I couldn't stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it's because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn't constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That's how my brain was. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Beavers Stop Started Inventing

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 you whole life. By Jonathan Safran Foer Strange Find Found Long Life

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Lvov Yankel Strange Book Sew

Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement. By Jonathan Safran Foer Books Lives Thought Real Replacement

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "I can't remember. Which?" "Do you know what those words mean?" "Not really." "An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical." "I'm an optimist." "Well, that's good, because there's no irrefutable evidence. There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to. By Jonathan Safran Foer Optimist Pessimist Remember Hopeful Cynical

We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. The books in my father's shed were sighing. The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing. I thought about waking her. but it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you ... It's always necessary. I love you, ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Bed Love Slept Unnecessary Anna

We know it (meat eating) is indisputably the number one cause of global warming. So what does it mean exactly to be an environmentalist on a daily basis if you are not thinking about the number one cause of global warming or one of the top two or three causes of all other environmental problems? Does it mean you are necessarily someone who doesn't care about the environment? Obviously not, but it might mean you have a blind spot for something big. By Jonathan Safran Foer Number Global Warming Meat Eating

Eating a piece of meat, at its most efficient, we could say is like throwing away six times that amount of food every time you eat it because you're recycling all those calories through it. I know a lot of people who came to this issue not through animal welfare but through wastefulness. By Jonathan Safran Foer Eating Meat Efficient Piece Throwing

The kind of funny irony is that a lot of people talk about ethical meat eating as if it's a way to care about things, but also not to alienate yourself from the rest of the world. But it's so much more alienating than vegetarianism. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things World Kind Funny Irony

Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case. By Jonathan Safran Foer Assumed Views Vegetarianism Eating Case

It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns. By Jonathan Safran Foer Amendment Guns Refreshing Politician Defend

Does it make you sad that we love the kids more than we love each other?" That exact line - those words in that order - had been in the script for months. By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Make Sad Kids Line

As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad's last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known. By Jonathan Safran Foer Beads Breaks Long Short Mom

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 skateboarded 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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Microphones Sound Hear Hearts

Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release ... So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of loveloving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist. By Jonathan Safran Foer Love World Brod Reason Time

My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp. By Jonathan Safran Foer Beginning Dream Back Clouds Ramp

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer World Give Love Walls Soft

But it was unnecessary.There would be other nights.And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled on my side and fell asleep next to her.Here is the point of everything I've been trying to tell you, Oskar.It's always necessary.I love you,Grandma By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Unnecessarythere Nightsand Yougrandma Rolled

A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write because that was exactly how it felt. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hospital Friend Including Fatherhood Days

Step your mind into a crowded elevator, an elevator so crowded you cannot turn around without bumping into (and aggravating) your neighbor. The elevator is so crowded you are often held aloft. This is a kind of blessing, as the slanted floor is made of wire, which cuts into your feet. After some time, those in the elevator will lose their ability to work in the interest of the group. Some will become violent; others will go mad. A few, deprived of food and hope, will become cannibalistic. There is no respite, no relief. No elevator repairman is coming. The doors will open once, at the end of your life, for your journey to the only place worse (see: PROCESSING). By Jonathan Safran Foer Crowded Elevator Step Aggravating Neighbor

Darling,You asked me to write you a letter, so I am writing you a letter. I do not know why I am writing you this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about, but I am writing it nonetheless, because I love you very much and trust that you have some good purpose for having me write this letter. I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.Your father By Jonathan Safran Foer Letter Writing Write Darlingyou Asked

But I knew the truth and that's why I was so sad. Every moment before this one depends on this one. Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sad Knew Truth Moment Depends

I told them all, "If possible, I would be here with only you, forever. But I am a man who toils, and I must go where I must. We need currency for famous nightclubs, yes? I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love. So do not spleen me." But to be truthful, I was not even the smallest portion sad to go to Lutsk to translate for Jonathan Safran Foer. As I mentioned before, my life is ordinary. But I had never been to Lutsk, or any of the multitudinous petite villages that still endure after the war. I desired to see new things. I desired to experience volumes. And I would be electrical to meet an American. By Jonathan Safran Foer Forever Told Lutsk Desired Toils

Maybe we're just missing things we've lost, or hoping for what we want to come. By Jonathan Safran Foer Lost Missing Things Hoping

Or maybe what he fears is just the opposite: that nobody is looking; that his death, like his life, is without purpose; that there is neither greater good nor evilonly people living and dying because their bodies function and then do not; that the universe is a rip. By Jonathan Safran Foer Opposite Death Life Purpose Rip

I'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things. By Jonathan Safran Foer Accomplishment Family Reading Learning Things

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals. By Jonathan Safran Foer Industry Happened Allied Professionals Glaring

I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said.The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Mother Letter Asked Grandmother Write

I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone. By Jonathan Safran Foer Pitcher Wanted Empty Overturned Stone

So, then why am I your son?" "Because Mom and I made love, and one of my sperm fertilized one of her eggs." "Excuse me while I regurgitate." "Don't act your age. By Jonathan Safran Foer Son Mom Excuse Love Eggs

It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning. By Jonathan Safran Foer Beautiful Hour Hours Low Long

The man took my passport and asked me the purpose of my visit, I wrote in my daybook, 'To mourn,' and then, 'To try to live,' he gave me a look and asked if I would consider that business or pleasure, I wrote, 'Neither.' 'For how long do you plan to mourn and try to live?' I wrote, 'For the rest of my life. By Jonathan Safran Foer Asked Live Wrote Mourn Visit

I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up to him. By Jonathan Safran Foer Years Walked Bakery Wanted Dogs

Anyway.I'm not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven't actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn't good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing on. And she said, "But it's turtles all the way down!"I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises. By Jonathan Safran Foer Allowed Watch Rent Documentaries Approved

I missed you even when I was with you. That's been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing. By Jonathan Safran Foer Missed Problem Missing Miss Surround

Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die. By Jonathan Safran Foer Shabbat Buddhists Jews Long Rabbis

He saw what they either couldn't see or couldn't allow themselves to see, and that only made him more pissed, because being less stupid than one's parents is repulsive, like taking a gulp from a glass of milk that you thought was orange juice. By Jonathan Safran Foer Pissed Repulsive Juice Made Stupid

A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent. By Jonathan Safran Foer Shtetl Whistle Powerful Wind Swept

He spent the next weeks blocking scenes of the bureaucrat fucking his wife. On the floor with cooking ingredients. Standing, with socks still on. In the grass of the yard of their new and immense house. He imagined her making noises she never made for him and feeling pleasures he could never provide because the bureaucrat was a man, and he was not a man. Does she suck his penis? he wondered. I know this is a silly thought, a thought that will only bring me pain, but I can't free myself of it. And when she sucks his penis, because she must, what is he doing? Is he pulling her hair back to watch? Is he touching her chest? Is he thinking of someone else? I'll kill him if he is. By Jonathan Safran Foer Wife Spent Weeks Blocking Scenes

She told him of ship voyages she had taken to places he had never heard of, and stories he knew were all untrue, were bad not-truths, even, but he nodded, and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of the story is always an absence and he wanted to live among presences. By Jonathan Safran Foer Knew Untrue Nottruths Nodded Convinced

He was caught somewhere between his mother's last kiss and the first kiss he would give his child, between the war that was and would be By Jonathan Safran Foer Child Kiss Caught Mother Give

God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them. God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch - man created in the image of what? the animals? - the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation. By Jonathan Safran Foer God Image Created Plagiarist Loves

the current division of the shtetl into its two sections, the Jewish Quarter and the Human Three-Quarters. All so-called sacred activities - religious studies, kosher butchering, bargaining, etc. - were contained within the Jewish Quarter. Those activities concerned with the humdrum of daily existence - secular studies, communal justice, buying and selling, etc. - took place in the Human Three-Quarters. Straddling the two was the Upright Synagogue. By Jonathan Safran Foer Jewish Quarter Human Sections Threequarters

This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? By Jonathan Safran Foer Experimentation Suffering Imagine Proportionate Good

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Reading Giving Running Parenthood Kids

In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sickness Miracles Anymore Seek Expect

It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake. By Jonathan Safran Foer Moment Marry Times Thousand Death

My bat mitzvah portion is about many things, but I think it is primarily about who we are wholly there for, and how that, more than anything else, defines our identity. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Defines Identity Bat Mitzvah

THE PROBLEM OF GOOD: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY BAD PEOPLE(SEE GOD) By Jonathan Safran Foer People God Good Unconditionally Problem

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD PEOPLEThey never do. By Jonathan Safran Foer Evil Unconditionally Problem Bad Things

The dream thatwe are our fathers. I walked to the Brod,41without knowing why, and looked intomy reflection in the water. I couldn't lookaway. What was the image that pulled mein after it? What was it that I loved? Andthen I recognized it. So simple. In thewater I saw my father's face, and that facesaw the face of its father, and so on, and soon, reflecting backward to the beginningof time, to the face of God, in whoseimage we were created. We burned withlove for ourselves, all of us, starters ofthe fire we suffered - our love was the afflictionfor which only our love was thecure ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Face Dream Thatwe Father Love

And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. By Jonathan Safran Foer Midafternoon Overcome Desire

In another place, their sons were killed between the barbs of their own guard wire, killed with misfired bombs while squirming in the mire like animals, killed with friendly fire, killed sometimes without knowing that they were about to die - a bullet through the head while joking with a comrade, laughing By Jonathan Safran Foer Killed Laughing Place Wire Animals

When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying 'I don't want to die.' That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore. By Jonathan Safran Foer Testimonies Heard Organization Recording Knew

Life is scarier than death. By Jonathan Safran Foer Life Death Scarier

Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness. By Jonathan Safran Foer Weeks Dawn Darkness Passed Boats

I'm not sure if you would consider this a dream or a memory, because it actually happened, but when I fall asleep I see the room in which I mourned the death of my son. For those of you who were there, you will remember how we sat without speaking, easting only as much as we had to. You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked it's wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was the first to notice the negative bird it left in the window? Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to race it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was? Who was with me when I mourned the death of my son, when I excused myself to bury that bird with my own hands? By Jonathan Safran Foer Bird Remember Shadow Left Memory

And the joys I've felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It as too big for me an would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler make that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. IF I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice By Jonathan Safran Foer Joyous Joys Felt Love Wear

Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. By Jonathan Safran Foer Make Worlds Knowing Vikings Universes

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays? By Jonathan Safran Foer Stays Hated Kind Person

I'm a novelist, I'm not an activist. I'm not a non-fiction writer, I'm not a journalist. I'm not a foodie, I'm not even really an animal person, or an environmentalist. I did the best I could with this, but it's not who I am. By Jonathan Safran Foer Novelist Activist Writer Journalist Nonfiction

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Yankel Inevitable Neverwife Fell Love

Yet we wanted human feeling, gestures free from suspicion, some sympathetic if stammering articulation, half syllables of mystification, a temporary eternal. By Jonathan Safran Foer Feeling Gestures Suspicion Articulation Half

Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn't dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sam Knowledge Enjoyed Control Utility

ARTArt is that thing having to do only with itself - the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no expamples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, teverything with an end exists outside of that thing, i.e., "I want to sell this", or "I want this to make me famous and loved", or "I want this to make me whole", or worse, "I want this to make others whole.") And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt and compose. Is this foolish of us? By Jonathan Safran Foer Make Art Artart Thing Product

When I got off the plane, after eleven hours of travel and forty years away, the man took my passport and asked me the purpose of my visit, I wrote in my daybook, "To mourn," and then, "To mourn try to live," he gave me a look and asked if I would consider that business or pleasure, I wrote, "Neither." "For how long do you plan to mourn and try to live?" "For as long as I can." "Are we talking about a weekend or a year?" I didn't write anything. The man said, "Next. By Jonathan Safran Foer Asked Wrote Mourn Live Plane

Our unspoken agreements led to disagreements, to suffering. By Jonathan Safran Foer Disagreements Suffering Unspoken Agreements Led

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? By Jonathan Safran Foer Growing Worse

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line ... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit. By Jonathan Safran Foer Lots Things Punch People Line

When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself. By Jonathan Safran Foer Written Read Confront Lies Telling

Grief and loss are probably the most fearful creatures that exist. But loss shouldn't be a fearful creature. It should be a creature of wisdom. It should teach us not to fear that tomorrow may never come, but live fully, as though the hours are melting away like seconds. Loss should teach us to cherish those we love, to never do anything that will result in regret, and to cheer on tomorrow with all of its promises of greatness. It's easy and un-extraordinary to be frightened of life. It's far more difficult to arm yourself with the good stuff despite all the bad and step foot into tomorrow as an everyday warrior. By Jonathan Safran Foer Loss Fearful Grief Exist Creature

He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me .. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sculpting Make Fall Love

Mom?" "Yes." "Nothing." "What is it, baby?" "Well it's just that wouldn't it be great if mattresses had spaces for your arm, so that when you rolled onto your side, you could fit just right?" "That would be nice." "And good for your back, probably, because it would let your spine be straight, which I know is important." "That is important." "Also, it would make snuggling easier. You know how that arm constantly gets in the way?" "I do." "And making snuggling easier is important." "Very. By Jonathan Safran Foer Important Mom Snuggling Easier Arm

I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. By Jonathan Safran Foer Joy Suffering Experienced End Thought

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern. By Jonathan Safran Foer Berlin Fish Kafka Aquarium Animals

She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that's love. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Love Loved

SADNESSES OF THE COVENANT: Sadness of God's love; Sadness of God's back [sic]; Favourite-child sadness; Sadness of b[ein]g sad in front of one's God; Sadness of the opposite of belief [sic]; What if? Sadness; Sadness of God alone in heaven; Sadness of a God who would need people to pray to Him ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Sadness God Sic Sadnesses Covenant

No matter how much I feel, I'm not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I'm gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I'll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I'm not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn't help anything. It just makes everyone's life worse. By Jonathan Safran Foer Feel Matter Cry Gonna Inside

But unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. This amounts to millions of pounds of meat now being thrown away every year. By Jonathan Safran Foer Animals Eaten Dogs Unlike Farmed

One of the great things about art is you get to see what your concerns are, what those things tumbling around inside you are. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Great Art Concerns Tumbling

I didn't understand why I needed help, because it seemed to me that you should wear heavy boots when your dad dies, and if you aren't wearing heavy boots, then you need help. By Jonathan Safran Foer Heavy Boots Dies Understand Needed

People around the world were moving from one place to another. No one was staying. By Jonathan Safran Foer People World Moving Place Staying

SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness . . . INTERPERSONAL SADNESSES: Sadness of being sad in front of one's parent; Sa[dn]ess of false love; Sadness of love [sic]; Friendship sadness; Sadness of a bad conversation; Sadness of the could-have-been; Secret sadness . . . By Jonathan Safran Foer Sadness Sadne Intellect Humor Anxiety

SADNESS OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds, Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Sadness Sadne Intellect Humor Anxiety

I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? By Jonathan Safran Foer Put Hand Touching Explain Touches

Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love. By Jonathan Safran Foer Unique Uncrossable Distance Sanctuary Shape

And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why - Why do we do this? Why don't we do that? - and often there isn't a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn't true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood - which is a good shame - is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. By Jonathan Safran Foer Parent Shame Inspires Good Children

[ ... ] he felt that he too was only a baby, with the chance to live without shame, without the need for consolation for a life lived wrong, a chance to be again innocent, simply and impossibly happy. By Jonathan Safran Foer Chance Baby Shame Wrong Innocent

What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake? By Jonathan Safran Foer Interpreting Dreams Wake Awake Dreaming

And there was shame in being human: the shame of knowing that twenty of the roughly thirty-five classified species of sea horse worldwide are threatened with extinction because they are killed "unintentionally" in seafood production. By Jonathan Safran Foer Unintentionally Shame Human Killed Production

August has passed, and yet summer continues by force to grow days. They sprout secretly between the chapters of the year, covertly included between its pages. By Jonathan Safran Foer August Passed Days Summer Continues

You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked its wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was first to notice the negative bird it left in the window? Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to trace it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was? By Jonathan Safran Foer Bird Remember Floor Shadow Left

the desire to wring out a few more drips of happiness almost always destroyed the happiness you were so lucky to have, and so foolish never to acknowledge. By Jonathan Safran Foer Happiness Acknowledge Desire Wring Drips

There are more places you haven't heard of then you're heard of!' I loved that By Jonathan Safran Foer Heard Places Loved

My friends are appeased to stay in Odessa for their entire lives. They are appeased to age like their parents, and become parents like their parents. They do not desire anything more than everything they have known. OK, but this is not for me, and it will not be for Little Igor. By Jonathan Safran Foer Odessa Appeased Lives Parents Friends

In my dream, people apologized for things that were about to happen, and lit candles by inhaling. By Jonathan Safran Foer Dream People Happen Inhaling Apologized

My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice. By Jonathan Safran Foer Vegetarians Wife Chosen Bring Children

I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to loose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news. By Jonathan Safran Foer Remember Joy Observe Write Mine

I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus. By Jonathan Safran Foer September Sons Overheard Image School

If we are at all serious about ending factory farming, then the absolute least we can do is stop sending checks to the absolute worst abusers. For some, the decision to eschew factory-farmed products will be easy. For others, the decision will be a hard one. To those for whom it sounds like a hard decision (I would have counted myself in this group), the ultimate question is whether it is worth the inconvenience. We know, at least, that this decision will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in world history. By Jonathan Safran Foer Absolute Decision Farming Abusers Ending

We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history. By Jonathan Safran Foer America Decision Ending Farming Deforestation

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Saved Increasingly Present Intimate

It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time? By Jonathan Safran Foer Heart Time Broke Pieces Made

Oskar Schell: If the sun were to explode, you wouldn't even know about it for 8 minutes because thats how long it takes for light to travel to us.For eight minutes the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm. It was a year since my dad died and I could feel my eight minutes with him ... were running out. By Jonathan Safran Foer Schell Minutes Oskar Explode Warm

Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless - it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is. By Jonathan Safran Foer Test Act Powerless Distant Voiceless

No baby knows when the nipple is pulled from his mouth for the last time. No child knows when he last calls his mother "Mama." No small boy knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story that will ever be read to him. No boy knows when the water drains from the last bath he will ever take with his brother. No young man knows, as he first feels his greatest pleasure, that he will never again not be sexual. No brinking woman knows, as she sleeps, that it will be four decades before she will again awake infertile. No mother knows she is hearing the word Mama for the last time. No father knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story he will ever read: From that day on, and for many years to come, peace reigned on the island of Ithaca, and the gods looked favorably upon Odysseus, his wife, and his son. By Jonathan Safran Foer Mama Baby Nipple Pulled Mouth

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Love Writing Matter Step

Factory farmers talk about their desire to feed the world. That's not what they're doing. They're feeding the world with really, really cheap stuff. By Jonathan Safran Foer Factory World Farmers Talk Desire

Farmers since the beginning of time have been feeding the world very successfully without systematically abusing animals or destroying the environment. But we're breeding food that is less safe for us, it tastes much worse than it ever has in history, and it's wreaking havoc on the environment in a way that it never did in history before. All in the interest of it being cheap. By Jonathan Safran Foer Environment Farmers Beginning Time Feeding

Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes. By Jonathan Safran Foer Potatoes People Sufficiently Colossal Task

And so it was when anyone tried to speak: their minds would become tangled in remembrance. Words became floods of thought with no beginning or end, and would drown the speaker before he could reach the life raft of the point he was trying to make. It was impossible to remember what one meant, what, after all of the words, was intended. By Jonathan Safran Foer Speak Remembrance Minds Tangled Words

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am. By Jonathan Safran Foer Novelist Greatest Fear Feeling Professional

There is an overabundance of rational reasons to say no to factory-farmed meat: It is the No. 1 cause of global warming, it systematically forces tens of billions of animals to suffer in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs, it is a decisive factor in the development of swine and avian flus, and so on. By Jonathan Safran Foer Meat Warming Dogs Flus Overabundance

I thought about packing my bags, I thought about jumping out a window, I sat on the bed and thought, I thought about you. What kind of food did you life, what was your favorite song, who was the first girl you kissed, and where, and how, I'm running out of room, I want an infinitely long blank book and forever. By Jonathan Safran Foer Thought Bags Window Packing Jumping

In America, millions of dogs and cats euthanized in animal shelters every year become the food for our food (twice as many such animals are euthanized as are adopted). By Jonathan Safran Foer America Millions Adopted Euthanized Food

Vegetarians are at best kindly but unrealistic. At worst they are delusional sentimentalists. By Jonathan Safran Foer Vegetarians Unrealistic Kindly Sentimentalists Worst

Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores. By Jonathan Safran Foer Protein Including Athletes Meet Vegetarians

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.) By Jonathan Safran Foer Vegetarian Made Count Times Telling

I know lots and lots and lots of vegetarians who think it's perfectly all right to kill animals for food to eat, but don't do it because they think all the ways in which it's done are wrong. By Jonathan Safran Foer Lots Eat Wrong Vegetarians Perfectly

As told by Kafka's close friend Max Brod:"Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. 'Now at least I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore.' It was the time he turned strictly vegetarian. By Jonathan Safran Foer Brod Suddenly Kafka Max Tanks

I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side. By Jonathan Safran Foer Doorknob Side Hand Put Thought

The Uprighters called them names and promised them an eternity of agony in the next world for their eagerness to be comfortable in this one. But like Shmul S, the intestine-tied milkman, the Slouchers couldn't give a shit. By Jonathan Safran Foer Uprighters Called Promised Eternity Agony

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation. By Jonathan Safran Foer Home Shops Trains Planes Houses

My father's face, when he said that, dissolved into a stillness, a sad expression, sadder than human feeling. By Jonathan Safran Foer Face Dissolved Stillness Expression Sadder

Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love. By Jonathan Safran Foer Parent Loses Child Finds Laugh

When the three of us, the three men named Alex, gathered in Father's house that night to converse the journey, Grandfather said, I do not want to do it. I am retarded, and I did not become a retarded person in order to have to perform shit such as this. I am done with it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Alex Grandfather Father Gathered Journey

People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down. By Jonathan Safran Foer People Books Description Breakingdown Write

Jacob didn't want to coerce or be coerced, but what was he supposed to do? Sit on his hands waiting for his grandfather to shatter his hip and die in a hospital room as every abandoned old person is destined to do? By Jonathan Safran Foer Jacob Coerced Coerce Supposed Sit

How do children do that? Jacob wondered. Not only enter rooms silently, but at the worst possible moment. By Jonathan Safran Foer Children Jacob Wondered Silently Moment

I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sad Disposition Thing Signifies Sadness

Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire? By Jonathan Safran Foer Dogs Wonderful Unique Fire Volvo

It strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children? By Jonathan Safran Foer Hormones Children Strange Upset People

I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days. By Jonathan Safran Foer Days Washed Chalk Lines

Someone needed to invent a way to be close to people without having to see them, or talk to them on the phone, or write (or read) letters, or e-mails, or texts. By Jonathan Safran Foer Letters Phone Write Read Emails

Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing. By Jonathan Safran Foer Language Trustworthy Animals Communicate Words

There are still many different ways to get stuck, existentially stuck. Feeling like, "This is worthless. I'm wasting my time, and I would be wasting the time of someone who tried to read this." It happens all the time. By Jonathan Safran Foer Stuck Existentially Time Wasting Feeling

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Places Apartment Marriage Writes Grandfather

I will never come around to the idea of an anthropomorphic God. I'm also uncomfortable with the word 'God' ... I'm agnostic about the answer and I'm agnostic about the question. By Jonathan Safran Foer God Idea Anthropomorphic Agnostic Word

So many visitors came to rub and kiss different parts of him for the fulfillment of their various wishes that his entire body had to be rebronzed every month. He was a changing god,destroyed and recreated by his believers, destroyed and recreated by their belief ... Those who prayed came to believe less and less in the god of their creation and more and more in theirbelief. By Jonathan Safran Foer Month Recreated Visitors Rub Kiss

The movement toward estrangement - from each other, and from themselves - took place in far smaller, subtler steps. They were always becoming closer in the realm of doing - coordinating the ever-expanding routines, talking and texting more (and more efficiently), cleaning together the mess made by the children they made - and farther in feeling. Once, By Jonathan Safran Foer Estrangement Smaller Subtler Steps Movement

It's so hard to express yourself.' I understand this.'I want to express myself.'The same is true for me.' I'm looking for my voice.' It's in your mouth.' I want to do something I'm not ashamed of.'Something you are proud of, yes?' Not even. I just don't want to be ashamed. By Jonathan Safran Foer Express Hard Ashamed This Myself

The arm was the arm, and it was the arm - not her husband, or even herself - that she thought about seven years later, on June 28, 1941, as the first German war blasts shook her wooden house to its foundations, and her eyes rolled back in her head to view, before dying, her insides. By Jonathan Safran Foer Arm June German Husband Foundations

Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming. By Jonathan Safran Foer United States Ninetynine Farmed Speak

I do not love famous nightclubs. They make me feel very cheerless and abandoned. Am I applying that word correctly? Abandoned? By Jonathan Safran Foer Nightclubs Abandoned Love Famous Correctly

Why couldn't she have slid it under the door? he wondered. Why couldn't she have folded it? It looked just like any other note she would leave him, like, Could you try to fix the broken knocker? or I'll be back soon, don't worry. It was so strange to him that such a different kind of note - I had to do it for myself - could look exactly the same: trivial, mundane, nothing. He could have hated her for leaving it there in plain sight, and he could have hated her for the plainness of it, a message without adornment, without any small clue to indicate that yes, this is important, yes, this is the most painful note I've ever written, yes, I would sooner die than have to write this again. Where were the dried teardrops? Where was the tremor in the script? By Jonathan Safran Foer Door Note Slid Hated Wondered

What if she cried? Of course she would cry. They would all cry. They'd wail. It would be horrible. The kids' lives would be ruined. Tens of thousands of people would die. Israel would be destroyed. He wanted all of that, not because he craved horror, but because imagining the worst kept him safe from it - focusing on doomsday allowed for the day to day. On By Jonathan Safran Foer Cried Cry Day Wail Horrible

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. By Jonathan Safran Foer Flailing Person Reaching Drowning Save

Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights. By Jonathan Safran Foer Empty Boredom Hours Nights Understand

When a book remembers, we remember. It reminds you that you have a body. So many of the things we may think of as burdensome are actually the things that make us more human. By Jonathan Safran Foer Remembers Remember Book Things Body

I am not a bad person," he said. "I am good person who has lived un a bad time. By Jonathan Safran Foer Bad Person Time Good Lived

Oskar: I'm God!Thomas: You're an atheist.Oskar: I don't exist! By Jonathan Safran Foer Thomas Oskar God Atheistoskar Exist

[ ... ] but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple. By Jonathan Safran Foer Complicated Things Extremely Simple Incredibly

I used to be an atheist, which means I didn't believe in things that couldn't be observed. I believed that once you're dead, you're dead forever, and you don't feel anything, and you don't even dream. It's not that I believe in things that can't be observed now, because I don't. It's that I believe that things are extremely complicated. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Atheist Observed Dead Forever

I believed him. I was not stupid. I was his wife. By Jonathan Safran Foer Believed Stupid Wife

When we found each other, I was very flabbergasted by his appearance. This is an American? I thought. And also, This is a Jew? He was severely short. He wore spectacles and had diminutive hairs which were not split anywhere, but rested on his head like a Shapka. (If i were like Father, I might even have dubbed him Shapka.) He did not appear like either the Americans I had witnessed in magazines, with yellow hairs and muscles, or the Jews from history books, with no hair and prominent bones. He was wearing nor blue jeans nor the uniform. In truth, he did not look like anything special at all. I was underwhelmed to the maximum. By Jonathan Safran Foer Appearance Shapka Found Flabbergasted Hairs

We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hard Turn Things Needed Heat

People care about animals. I believe that. They just don't want to know or to pay. A fourth of all chickens have stress fractures. It's wrong. They're packed body to body, and can't escape their waste, and never see the sun. Their nails grow around the bars of their cages. It's wrong. They feel their slaughters. It's wrong, and people know it's wrong. They don't have to be convinced. They just have to act differently. I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own. By Jonathan Safran Foer Wrong Animals Care People Live

But I do not do these things because we are family. I do them because they are common decencies. That is an idiom that the hero taught me. I do them because I am not a big fucking asshole. That is another idiom that the hero taught me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Family Things Hero Taught Idiom

Desperately knocking against the blind little world, i loosened one of its planks, opening a window to a new, wider world. There, spread out, was a profusion of geography, of atmosphere, of full empty air. By Jonathan Safran Foer World Desperately Planks Opening Wider

Nothing- not a conversation, not a handshake or even a hug- establishes friendship so forcefully as eating together. By Jonathan Safran Foer Conversation Hug Establishes Handshake Friendship

What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable ... Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying ... We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood. By Jonathan Safran Foer Animals Profit Meat Industry Figured

TV guy and sometimes cooker Gordon Ramsay can get pretty macho with baby animals when doing publicity for something he's selling, but you'll never see a puppy peeking out of one of his pots. And though he once said he'd electrocute his children if they became vegetarian, I wonder what his response would be if they poached the family pooch. By Jonathan Safran Foer Gordon Ramsay Selling Pots Guy

In my dream, all of the collapsed ceilings reformed above us. The fire went back into the bombs, which rose up and into the bellies of planes whose propellers turned backward, like the second hands of the clocks across Dresden, only faster. By Jonathan Safran Foer Dream Collapsed Ceilings Reformed Dresden

I' was the last word I was able to speak aloud. I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning, but instead I said, 'I.' I know I'm not alone in this disease, you hear the old people in the street and some of them are moaning, "Ay yay yay," but some of them are clinging to their last word, 'I,' they're saying, because they're desperate, it's not a complaint it's a prayer, and then I lost 'I' and my silence was complete. By Jonathan Safran Foer Aloud Word Speak Silence Yay

Her life was a slow realization that the world was not for her and that for whatever reason she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. table ivory elephant charm rainbow onion hairdo violence melodrama honey ... None of it moved her. She addressed the world honestly searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her but to each she would have to say I don't love you. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Love Life Slow Realization

I wanted to build walls around him, I wanted to separate inside from outside, I wanted to give him an infinitely long blank book and the rest of time. By Jonathan Safran Foer Wanted Time Build Walls Separate

It is my great hope that our paths, however long and winding, will cross again. By Jonathan Safran Foer Paths Winding Great Hope Long

You used to write such honest books. Honest and emotionally ambitious. Maybe they weren't finding millions of readers. Maybe they weren't making you rich. But they were making the world rich By Jonathan Safran Foer Books Honest Write Rich Making

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs. By Jonathan Safran Foer Shower Songs Green Legs Singing

A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible. By Jonathan Safran Foer Astronomer Simple Trick Backyard Trouble

It hurts me when you do not want to hurt me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hurts Hurt

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe. By Jonathan Safran Foer People Friends Lists Protect Pockets

I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders. By Jonathan Safran Foer Burden Living Store Magazines Shoulders

Children were allowed to lie down on the park as it was being moved. This was considered a concession, although no one knew why a concession was necessary, or why it was to children that this concession must be made. The biggest fireworks show in history lit the skies of New York City that night, and the Philarmonic played its heart out.The children of New York lay on their backs, body to body, filling every inch of the park, as if it had been designed for them and that moment. The fireworks sprinkled down, dissolving in the air just before they reached the ground, and the children were pulled, one millimeter and one second at a time, into Manhattan and adulthood. By the time the park found its current resting place, every single one of the children had fallen asleep, and the park was a mosaic of their dreams. Some hollered out, some smiled unconsciously, some were perfectly still. By Jonathan Safran Foer Children Park Concession York Moved

Objects that don't exist don't exist. If we were to imagine such a thing as an object that didn't exist, it would be that thing that God hated. This is the strongest argument against the nonbeliever. If God didn't exist, he would have to hate himself, and that is obviously nonsense. By Jonathan Safran Foer Exist God Thing Objects Object

Even if Lady Macbeth could have removed that damn spot, wouldn't her hands have been red from all of the scrubbing? By Jonathan Safran Foer Lady Macbeth Spot Scrubbing Removed

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog. By Jonathan Safran Foer Nation Dog Felt Shame Living

We have waged war, or rather let a war be waged, against all of the animals we eat. This war is new and has a name: factory farming. By Jonathan Safran Foer Waged Eat War Animals Factory

YOU WILL DRINK THE COFFEE UNTIL I CAN SEE MY FACE IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CUP!" I did not mean to roar. "But it's a clay cup." "I DO NOT CARE!" He finished the coffee. "You did not have to finish it," I said, because I could perceive that he was rebuilding the Great Wall of China with shit bricks. By Jonathan Safran Foer Drink Face Bottom Cup Coffee

The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed. By Jonathan Safran Foer Inspires Question Change Changed Remain

She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Depends

Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't. By Jonathan Safran Foer Literature Drawn Funny Perimeter Art

There are only so many times that you can utter 'It does not hurt' before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hurt Utter Times Begins Feeling

How beautiful is forgetting! What relief it would be for the world to lose some of its contents. By Jonathan Safran Foer Forgetting Beautiful Contents Relief World

The Upright congregants looked down on the Slouchers, who seemed willing to sacrifice any Jewish law for the sake of what they feebly termed the great and necessary reconciliation of religion with life. The Uprighters called them names and promised them an eternity of agony in the next world for their eagerness to be comfortable in this one. By Jonathan Safran Foer Slouchers Upright Jewish Life Congregants

I wanted so much to have a life. Even just once, even for a second. By Jonathan Safran Foer Life Wanted

Given that eating animals is in absolutely no way necessary for my family - unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods - should we ear animals? By Jonathan Safran Foer Family Unlike World Foods Animals

In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations. By Jonathan Safran Foer Father Family Conversations World Champion

Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hear Return Time Heard

I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy. By Jonathan Safran Foer Happy Dreaming Mom Nightmares Angry

When I was old enough to take baths in the bathtub, and to know I had a penis and a scrotum and everything, I asked her not to sit in the room with me. "Why not?" "Privacy." "Privacy from what? From me?" I didn't want to hurt her feelings, because not hurting her feelings is another of my raisons d'etre. "Just privacy," I said ... She agreed to wait outside, but only if I held a ball of yarn, which went under the bathroom door and was connected to the scarf she was knitting. Every few seconds she would give it a tug, and I had to tug backundoing what she had just doneso that she could know I was OK. By Jonathan Safran Foer Privacy Bathtub Baths Penis Scrotum

So what did Sammy do?" Irv asked, his mouth full of gluten. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sammy Irv Asked Gluten Mouth

In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots. By Jonathan Safran Foer York Reservoir Tears Bed Night

I went to my grandmother ... and asked her to write a letter. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said. By Jonathan Safran Foer Letter Asked Grandmother Write Told

I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the 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 of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone, I sit on the side with a coffee and write in my daybook, By Jonathan Safran Foer People Reunited Thing Crying Impatience

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the 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 of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone. By Jonathan Safran Foer People Reunited Crying Impatience Change

She always saw through him, as if he were just another window. She always felt that she knew everything about him that could be known. Not that he was simple, but that he was knowable, like a list of errands, like an encyclopedia. By Jonathan Safran Foer Window Felt Knew Simple Knowable

You do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter," I told her, and she said, "Then I would never utter another word again." "You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do." "Then I would never do anything again. By Jonathan Safran Foer Utter Told Word

So many days in their shared life. So many experiences. How had they managed to spend the previous sixteen years unlearning each other? By Jonathan Safran Foer Life Days Shared Experiences Managed

Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms. By Jonathan Safran Foer Drugged Needless Jamming Deformed Overstressed

He conducted interviews with nearly a hundred USDA poultry inspectors from thirty-seven plants. "Every week," he reports, "millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumors, or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers." Next By Jonathan Safran Foer Usda Plants Conducted Interviews Hundred

Thinking about her is the next best thing! By Jonathan Safran Foer Thinking Thing

No, I do not like music. (But what she really was trying to say was this: I like music better than anything in the world, after you.) By Jonathan Safran Foer Music World

If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten? By Jonathan Safran Foer Fish Eaten Day Encounter Form

It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine. By Jonathan Safran Foer Afraid True Dying World Unnoticed

In truth I was manufacturing a brick wall of shits. By Jonathan Safran Foer Shits Truth Manufacturing Brick Wall

If it was your child, do you want your child to suffer three years, three months, three weeks, three hours, three minutes? A turkey chick isn't a human baby, but it suffers. I've never met anyone in the industry - manager, vet, worker, anyone - who doubts that they feel pain. So how much suffering is acceptable? That's what's at the bottom of all of this, and what each person has to ask himself. How much suffering will you tolerate for your food? My By Jonathan Safran Foer Child Years Months Weeks Hours

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand ... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word. By Jonathan Safran Foer Music Misunderstood Understand Communicated Find

And yet and yet - the last secret of the tree of codes is that nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Nowhere as much as there do we feel possibilities shaken by the nearness of realization. The atmosphere becomes possibilities and we shall wander and make a thousand mistakes. We shall wander along yet not be able to understand. By Jonathan Safran Foer Conclusion Secret Tree Codes Reach

Fuck You!' [Oskar said] 'Exuse me!' [His mom said] 'Sorry. I mean, screw you.' 'You need a time-out!' 'I need a mausoleum! By Jonathan Safran Foer Fuck Oskar Exuse Screw Timeout

I never thought of myself as quiet or much less silent ... is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one millions times but never once into it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Thinking Silent Bliss Thought Quiet

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Stronger Yankel Suddenly Dying Died

Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now. By Jonathan Safran Foer Change Animals Day World Luxurious

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hate Day Things Family

They reciprocated the great and saving liethat our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for thingswillfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life. By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Willfully Life Reciprocated Great

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster's paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares. By Jonathan Safran Foer Buckminster Night Eyelids Woke Middle

We are lying to ourselves and to each other.Lying about what? I don't care if we're lying.I am a bad person.I don't care. I don't care what you are. By Jonathan Safran Foer Care Lying Otherlying Lyingi Bad

The kids silenced."OK,"' Julia said. "Well, as you probably know, I'm Sam's mom. He told me not to make a big deal, so I'll keep this to the essentials. First, I want to let you all know how totally psyched I am to be here with you."Sam closed his eyes, willing himself to unlearn object permanence. By Jonathan Safran Foer Julia Silenced Sam Kids Mom

This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence? By Jonathan Safran Foer Thought Love Absence Presence Notice

Because sometimes people who seem goodend up being not as good as you might have hoped. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hoped People Goodend Good

And so was the synagogue lifted and moved. It was in 1783 that wheels were attached, making the shtetl's ever-changing negotiation of Jewishness and Humanness less of a schlep. By Jonathan Safran Foer Moved Synagogue Lifted Jewishness Humanness

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when? By Jonathan Safran Foer Destructive Culinary Preference Decide Eat

You had a talk? You think talk got us out of Egypt or Entebbe? Uh-uh. Plague and Uzis. Talk gets you a good place in line for a shower that isn't a shower. By Jonathan Safran Foer Talk Entebbe Egypt Shower Uzis

Only one thing can keep something close over time: holding it there. Grappling with it. Wrestling it to the ground, as Jacob did with the angel, and refusing to let go. What we don't wrestle we let go of. Love isn't the absence of struggle. Love is struggle. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Holding Love Thing Close

She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself. By Jonathan Safran Foer Mirrors Avoids Lifts Powerful Telescope

What about the 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 just crack up with me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Teakettle Shakespeare Mouth Melodies Spout

It's hard to say goodbye to the place you've lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person. By Jonathan Safran Foer Lived Goodbye Hard Place Person

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 was 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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Messiah God World End Grandfather

At first I thought I'd walked into a tree, but then that tree became a person, who was also recovering on the ground, and then I saw that it was her and she saw that it was me ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Tree Person Ground Thought Walked

I remembered my mother's speech at my wedding. "In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it." Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it? By Jonathan Safran Foer Wedding Sickness Remembered Mother Speech

Writing is like pulling teeth out of your penis. By Jonathan Safran Foer Writing Penis Pulling Teeth

Each case of food-borne illness cannot be traced, but where we do know the original, or the "vehicle of transmission," it is, overwhelmingly, an animal product. According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), poultry is by far the largest cause ... 83 percent of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase ... The next time a friend has ... "the stomach flu" - ask a few questions ... he or she was probably among the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the CDC estimates occur in America each year. By Jonathan Safran Foer Overwhelmingly Traced Original Vehicle Transmission

I'm interested in the kind of religion that makes life harder. I'm not so interested in the comforting kind of religion. By Jonathan Safran Foer Harder Interested Kind Religion Makes

Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can't we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our dinner plates - or for that matter, the KFC in our hands? By Jonathan Safran Foer Beginning Adam Eve Guidance Story

She asked: "What can you promise?" He promised: "Things are about to be different. By Jonathan Safran Foer Asked Promise Things Promised

In the water I saw my father's face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created. By Jonathan Safran Foer Face God Father Reflecting Time

I have witnessed Grandfather cry, and I implore myself to say that I desire to never witness him cry again. If this signifies that I must do things for him so that he will not cry, then I will do those things. If this signifies that I must not look when he cries, then I will not look. By Jonathan Safran Foer Grandfather Cry Signifies Witnessed Implore

The gift is for you ... The surprise is for me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Gift Surprise

All happy mornings resemble one another, as do all unhappy mornings, and that's at the bottom of what makes them so deeply unhappy: the feeling that this unhappiness has happened before, that efforts to avoid it will at best reinforce it, and probably even exacerbate it, that the universe is, for whatever inconceivable, unnecessary, and unjust reason, conspiring against the innocent sequence of clothes, breakfast, teeth and egregious cowlicks, backpacks, shoes, jackets, goodbye. Jacob By Jonathan Safran Foer Unnecessary Breakfast Backpacks Shoes Jackets

I wasn't trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn't matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in. By Jonathan Safran Foer Homes Matter City Country Century

I will walk without noise and I will open the door in darkness and I will By Jonathan Safran Foer Walk Noise Open Door Darkness

Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war. By Jonathan Safran Foer Lips Laughs War Blushes Religion

When I learned about this, I was told that it was "instinct." ("Instinct" continues to be the explanation of choice whenever animal behavior implies too much intelligence.) Instinct, though, wouldn't go very far in explaining how pigeons use human transportation routes to navigate. Pigeons follow highways and take particular exits, likely following many of the same landmarks as the humans driving below. By Jonathan Safran Foer Instinct Learned Told Pigeons Continues

The factory farm industry (in alliance with the pharmaceutical industry) currently has more power than public-health professionals ... We give it to them. We have chosen, unwittingly, to fund this industry on a massive scale by eating factory-farmed animal products (and water sold as animal products) - and we do so daily. By Jonathan Safran Foer Professionals Products Industry Factory Farm

There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists. By Jonathan Safran Foer Polarize Eating Animals Eat Sincerely

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Passing Hand Waving Train

The persistence of the story of animal consent into the contemporary era tells of a human appreciation of the stakes, and a desire to do the right thing. By Jonathan Safran Foer Stakes Thing Persistence Story Animal

From the unemployed Sloucher Lumpl W, who reclined on Passover not because it was religious custom but because why should that night be different from all others?: I'm not the greatest person that ever lived, but I would be a good father, and you know it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sloucher Lumpl Passover Lived Father

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. By Jonathan Safran Foer Usurer Yankel Evening Disgraced Baby

A Seeing Eye bitch is not only for blind people but for people who pine for the negative of loneliness. By Jonathan Safran Foer Eye People Loneliness Bitch Blind

...and when is enough proof enough? By Jonathan Safran Foer Proof

I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. By Jonathan Safran Foer Love Loved Loves

She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. By Jonathan Safran Foer Brimming Felt Producing Hoarding Love

(..) she cried and cried and cried, there weren't any napkins nearby so I ripped the page from the book - "I don't speak. I'm sorry." - and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara (..) By Jonathan Safran Foer Cried Book Speak Napkins Nearby

There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to. By Jonathan Safran Foer Things Good Social Security Tax

Wolf Blitzer had once again relieved the horrible tension of his purgatorial beard - neither a beard nor not a beard - with yet another new pair of glasses. By Jonathan Safran Foer Beard Blitzer Wolf Glasses Relieved

Maybe it's true that you can use up all of your tears...It was nice to think about, because what I wanted was to be empty. By Jonathan Safran Foer Tears Empty True Nice Wanted

Nobody likes war not even those who survive it, not even the winners. By Jonathan Safran Foer Winners War Survive

Mom said, "His spirit is there," and that made me really angry. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." "His memory is here," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak! By Jonathan Safran Foer Dad Spirit Mom Angry Cells

What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her? By Jonathan Safran Foer Aloud Displacement Finger Moments Things

Parents don't have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and Parenthood so utterly beautiful: the All or nothing wager. The Faith. By Jonathan Safran Foer Reasonable Parents Religious Luxury Person

I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each others as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad. By Jonathan Safran Foer Pessimist Asked Optimist True Beautiful

Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are. By Jonathan Safran Foer Wonderful Hundreds Maple Asked Day

A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living. By Jonathan Safran Foer Hundreds Thousands Dollars Worth Luck

Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right - how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? - but the birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste. By Jonathan Safran Foer Diseaseridden Consumers Drugstuffed Shitcontaminated Taste

We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how. By Jonathan Safran Foer Home Quiet Car Ride Hey

And when she said, Father, I love you, she was neither naive nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough to lie. By Jonathan Safran Foer Father Dishonest Opposite Lie Love

Yes, I cannot dispute that she is crazy. But she is also compassionate. By Jonathan Safran Foer Crazy Dispute Compassionate

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not. By Jonathan Safran Foer Grown Older Convinced Talked Protecting

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness? By Jonathan Safran Foer Dog Happiness Watching Fill

Laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, By Jonathan Safran Foer Laughed Coffee Cried Pictures Talked

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming? By Jonathan Safran Foer Felt Night Stage Skull Incredibly

He removed several pages of death certificates, which were picked up by another breeze and sent into the trees. Some would fall with the leaves that September. Some would fall with the trees generations later. By Jonathan Safran Foer Certificates Fall Trees September Removed

I wanted to protect him, which I was sure I could do, even if I could not protect myself. By Jonathan Safran Foer Protect Wanted

Once upon a time, USDA inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about thirty years ago, the poultry industry convinced the USDA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a cosmetic blemish. By Jonathan Safran Foer Usda Time Contamination Inspectors Condemn

Why are entire flocks of industrial birds dying at once? And what about the people eating those birds? Just the other day, one of the local pediatricians was telling me he's seeing all kinds of illnesses that he never used to see. Not only juvenile diabetes, but inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that a lot of the docs don't even know what to call. And girls are going through puberty much earlier; and kids are allergic to just about everything, and asthma is out of control. Everyone knows it's our foods ... Kids today are the first generation to grow up on this stuff ... By Jonathan Safran Foer Birds Entire Flocks Industrial Dying

It's an empowering idea. The entire goliath of the food industry is driven and determined by the choices we make as the waiter gets impatient for our order or in the practicalities ad whimsies of what we load into our shopping carts or farmers'-market bags. By Jonathan Safran Foer Idea Empowering Bags Entire Goliath

The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity. By Jonathan Safran Foer Torah Jewish Haggadah Law Memory

I promised myself I wouldn't be the first to look away, but I was. By Jonathan Safran Foer Promised

They lay in silence, thinking their own thoughts, each trying to know the other's. They were becoming strangers on top of each other. By Jonathan Safran Foer Silence Thinking Thoughts Lay Strangers

Cruelty ... prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Cruelty Prefers Abstraction Silly Murdering

Killing an animals oneself is more often then not a way to forget the problem while pretending to remember. This is perhaps more harmful than ignorance. It is always possible to wake someone from sleep, but there is no amount of noise that will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.pg. 102. By Jonathan Safran Foer Killing Remember Pretending Animals Oneself

This was a troublesome supplication, because at the dawn of July, Ukraine was to celebrate the first birthday of its ultramodern constitution, which makesus feel very nationalistic, and so many people would be on vacation in foreign places. By Jonathan Safran Foer July Ukraine Supplication Constitution Nationalistic

That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying. This isn't animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating ... Why doesn't a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It's easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it ... How riveting wold the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? By Jonathan Safran Foer Model Animal Business Eating Grow

It's very hard to have a productive dialogue with a thirteen-year-old boy, as every gently broached subject becomes an Ultimate Conversation, requiring defense systems and counterattacks to attacks that were never launched. What begins as an innocent observation about his habit of leaving things in the pockets of dirty clothes ends with Sam blaming his parents for his twenty-eighth-percentile height, which makes him want to commit suicide on YouTube. By Jonathan Safran Foer Conversation Boy Ultimate Requiring Launched

I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. But now I think the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world. By Jonathan Safran Foer Wonderful Terrible Celebrate Big Life

Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sadness Sadnesses Ecstasy Guilt Brod

The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it. By Jonathan Safran Foer Overcome Sadness Consume

It was the feeling of not wanting to live in the world, even if it was the only place to live. By Jonathan Safran Foer Live World Feeling Wanting Place

Regarding US government recommendations that tend to encourage dairy consumption in the name of preventing osteoporosis, Nestle notes that in parts of the world where milk is not a staple of the diet, people often have less osteoporosis and fewer bone fractures than Americans do. The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods. By Jonathan Safran Foer Nestle Americans Osteoporosis Diet Dairy

From the movie "Everything is Illuminated" based on a book by Jonathan Safran Foer:I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine. By Jonathan Safran Foer Foer Safran Illuminated Side Movie

Sea horses have complicated routines for courtship, and tend to mate under full moons, making musical sounds while doing so. They live in long-term monogamous partnerships. What is perhaps most unusual, though, is that it is the male sea horse that carries the young for up to six weeks. Males become properly "pregnant," not only carrying, but fertilizing and nourishing the developing eggs with fluid secretions. The image of males giving birth is perpetually mind-blowing: a turbid liquid bursts forth from the brood pouch, and like magic, minuscule but fully formed sea horses appear out of the cloud. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sea Courtship Moons Making Complicated

Sadness of feeling the need to create beautiful things; By Jonathan Safran Foer Sadness Things Feeling Create Beautiful

I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. By Jonathan Safran Foer Book Hands Made Life Palm

This is the sixty-nine," I told him, presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my fingers two of them on the action, so that he would not overlook it. "Why is it dubbed sixty-nine?" he asked, because he is a person hot on fire with curiosity. "It was invented in 1969. My friend Gregory knows a friend of the nephew of the inventor." "What did people do before 1969?" "Merely blowjobs and masticating box, but never in chorus. By Jonathan Safran Foer Sixtynine Presenting Told Magazine Front

Lvov is a city like New York City in America. New York City, in truth, was designed on the model of Lvov. By Jonathan Safran Foer America York City Lvov Truth

I have made efforts to make you appear as a person with less anxiety, as you have commanded me to do on so many occasions. This is difficult to achieve, because in truth you are a person with very much anxiety. Perhaps you should be a drug user. By Jonathan Safran Foer Person Anxiety Occasions Made Efforts

Because they were young. Because one is young only once in a life lived only once. Because recklessness is the only fist to throw at nothingness. How much aliveness can one bear? By Jonathan Safran Foer Young Nothingness Life Lived Bear

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful. By Jonathan Safran Foer Day Thanksgiving Holiday Encompasses Martin

Do you have any coffee?' ... 'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death. By Jonathan Safran Foer Coffee Growth Death Stunts Afraid

Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine. By Jonathan Safran Foer Dark Crowded People Starting Streets

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? By Jonathan Safran Foer Senses Taste Exempted Crudest Ethical

He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father. By Jonathan Safran Foer Promised Father Child Liar Knew

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live. By Jonathan Safran Foer Live Regret Life Learn

Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change. By Jonathan Safran Foer Animal Greater Combined Change Agriculture

You can make great meals without meat that are, of course, much more healthy for the same price, but it takes a process of reeducation, just because Americans aren't familiar with how to cook vegetables anymore. By Jonathan Safran Foer Americans Price Reeducation Anymore Make

Later that year, when snow started to hide the front steps, when morning became evening as I sat on the sofa, buried under everything I'd lost, I made a fire and used my laughter for kindling: "Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha! By Jonathan Safran Foer Year Steps Sofa Buried Lost

I think there's going to be something that happens now, where books move in two directions, one toward digitized formats and one toward remembering what's nice about the physicality of them. By Jonathan Safran Foer Directions Books Move Digitized Formats

The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river. By Jonathan Safran Foer River Tree Meaning Thoughts Started

I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Time Neighborhoods Shook Tambourine Helped

Mom told me, "It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don't you think?" I told her, "It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone. By Jonathan Safran Foer Grandma Pretty Lonely Mom Told

What about that five-foot-four woman, who never inflicted physical or emotional violence, or even saw a punishment all the way through, terrified her husband and children to the point of unconditional surrender? Jacob By Jonathan Safran Foer Woman Violence Terrified Surrender Jacob

It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself. By Jonathan Safran Foer Challenge Eat

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do. By Jonathan Safran Foer Response Responding Equally Responsible

Tomorrow was over the horizon and it would take an entire day to reach By Jonathan Safran Foer Tomorrow Reach Horizon Entire Day

When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decisioneating 'like everyone else'is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic. By Jonathan Safran Foer Forks Lift Hang Hats Farmworkers

The factory farm has succeeded by divorcing people from their food, eliminating farmers, and ruling agriculture by corporate fiat. By Jonathan Safran Foer Food Eliminating Farmers Fiat Factory

She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child. By Jonathan Safran Foer Child Miss Touch Wanted Speak

And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table? By Jonathan Safran Foer Writing Letter Library Thousands Life

We spent our lives making livings. By Jonathan Safran Foer Livings Spent Lives Making

I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces. By Jonathan Safran Foer Write Guest Room Pretended Hit

Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things. By Jonathan Safran Foer Haggadah Jewish Book Jews Widely

What the world does not need is a Haggadah that pats itself on the back. It needs a Haggadah that gets out of the way, that starts a conversation and gets out of the way. By Jonathan Safran Foer Haggadah Back World Pats Starts

I asked her why she was getting so upset about such a small thing. She said, 'It doesn't feel small to me. By Jonathan Safran Foer Thing Small Asked Upset Feel

I brought the birdcages to the windows.I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages.I poured the fish down the drain.I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars.I released the insects onto the street.And the reptiles.And the mice.I told them, Go.All of you.Go.And they went.And they didn't come back By Jonathan Safran Foer Opened Windows Goall Back Brought

Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good? By Jonathan Safran Foer Matter Good Eat Chicken Familiar

Again and again we are confronted with the reality - some might say the problem - of sharing our space with other living things, be they dogs, trees, fish or penguins. By Jonathan Safran Foer Trees Reality Problem Things Dogs

From 1935 to 1995, the average weight of "broilers" increased by 65%, while their time-to-market dropped 60% and their feed requirements dropped 57%. To gain a sense of the radicalness of this change, imagine human children growing to be 300 pounds in 10 years, while eating only granola bars and Flintstones vitamins. By Jonathan Safran Foer Dropped Broilers Increased Average Weight