Background Image

...

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!

-Jonathan Safran Foer

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Anyway, The Fascinating Thing

Jonathan Safran Foer

...

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!

Views: 8

Topic

More From Jonathan Safran Foer

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.

If We Communicated With Something Like Music, We Would Never Be Misunderstood, Because There Is Nothing In Music To Understand.

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.

Words Are Capable Of Making Experience More Vivid, And Also Of Organizing It. They Can Scare Us, And They Can Comfort Us.

I Wanted To Protect Him, Which I Was Sure I Could Do, Even If I Could Not Protect Myself.

The End Of Suffering Does Not Justify The Suffering, And So There Is No End To Suffering.

It Made Me Start To Wonder If There Were Other People So Lonely So Close. I Thought About “eleanor Rigby.” It’s True, Where Do They All Come From? And Where Do They All Belong?

...he Was Leaving Me. I Wondered If I Should Stop Him. If I Should Wrestle Him To The Ground And Force Him To Love Me. I Wanted To Hold His Shoulders Down And Shout Into His Face.

What's So Horrible About Being Dead Forever, And Not Feeling Anything, And Not Even Dreaming? What's So Great About Feeling And Dreaming?

Parents Are Always More Knowledgeable Than Their Children, And Children Are Always Smarter Than Their Parents.

Everything I Did, I Did Because I Thought It Was The Correct Thing To Do… I Am Not A Hero, It Is True… But I Am Not A Bad Person, Either.

She Was A Genius Of Sadness, Immersing Herself In It, Separating Its Numerous Strands, Appreciating Its Subtle Nuances. She Was A Prism Through Which Sadness Could Be Divided Into Its Infinite Spectrum.

I Believed Him. I Was Not Stupid. I Was His Wife.

The Mistakes I've Made Are Dead To Me. But I Can't Take Back The Things I Never Did.

She Avoids Mirrors, And Lifts A Powerful Telescope To Find Herself.

Sometimes I Can Feel My Bones Straining Under The Weight Of All The Lives I'm Not Living.

Nine Out Of Ten Significant People Have To Do With Money Or War!

Reality Hunger Is More Than Thought-provoking; It's One Of The Most Beautiful Books I've Read In A Long Time.

I Feel Too Much. That's What's Going On.' 'do You Think One Can Feel Too Much? Or Just Feel In The Wrong Ways?' 'my Insides Don't Match Up With My Outsides.' 'do Anyone's Insides And Outsides Match Up?' 'i Don't Know. I'm Only Me.' 'maybe That's What A Person's Personality Is: The Difference Between The Inside And Outside.' 'but It's Worse For Me.' 'i Wonder If Everyone Thinks It's Worse For Him.' 'probably. But It Really Is Worse For Me.

Why Didn't He Say Goodbye? I Gave Myself A Bruise. Why Didn't He Say 'i Love You'?

It Will Never Be The Case That People Won't Eat Meat. I Think It Could Conceivably Be The Case One Day That People Eat Very Small Amounts Of It. That It's A Special Thing, Rather Than Reach For It Because It's Cheap Or Reach For It Because It's Convenient, That It Becomes Something Festive Or Something Celebratory, Once A Week, And That Could Actually Be Achieved On Small Farms If We Really Changed Our Habits.

(what Are Your Ghosts Like?) (they Are On The Insides Of The Lids Of My Eyes.) (this Is Also Where My Ghosts Reside.) (you Have Ghosts?) (of Course I Have Ghosts.) (but You Are A Child.) (i Am Not A Child.) (but You Have Not Known Love.) (these Are My Ghosts, The Spaces Amid Love.)

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.

I Flipped Back Through The Pad Of Paper While I Thought About What Stephen Hawking Would Do Next.

But I Dig Negroes. I Dig Them All The Way.

They Learned To Hate Her Unknowability, Her Untouchability, The Collage Of Her.

Perhaps In The Back Of Our Minds We Already Understand, Without All The Science I've Discussed, That Something Terribly Wrong Is Happening. Our Sustenance Now Comes From Misery. We Know That If Someone Offers To Show Us A Film On How Our Meat Is Produced, It Will Be A Horror Film. We Perhaps Know More Than We Care To Admit, Keeping It Down In The Dark Places Of Our Memory-- Disavowed. When We Eat Factory-farmed Meat We Live, Literally, On Tortured Flesh. Increasingly, That Tortured Flesh Is Becoming Our Own.

I Desperately Wish I Had My Tambourine With Me Now, Because Even After Everything I'm Still Wearing Heavy Boots, And Sometimes It Helps To Play A Good Beat

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

Understanding Yourself

Food For Her Is Not Food, It Is Terror, Dignity, Gratitude, Vengeance, Joyfulness, Humiliation, Religion, History, And, Of Course, Love. As If The Fruit She Always Offered Us Were Picked From The Destroyed Brances Of Out Family Tree.

The Hardest Part Of Writing Is Not To Get The Ideas But To Remember, Why It Is Important To Get Them.

The End Of Suffering Does Not Justify The Suffering, What A Mess I Am, I Thought, What A Fool, How Foolish And Narrow, How Worthless, How Pinched And Pathetic, How Helpless.

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 Their Belief.

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone. There Was No Invention To Get Around That.

I Try Not To Remember The Life That I Didn’t Want To Lose But Lost And Have To Remember

We Are Not Long-term Beings. Not Heroes Of Romances In Many Volumes. For One Gesture, For One Word Alone, We Shall Make The Effort. We Openly Admit: Our Creations Will Be Temporary. We Shall Have This As Our Aim: A Gesture.

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.

She Felt As If She Were Brimming, Always Producing And Hoarding More Love Inside Her. But There Was No Release.

Which, Then, Brings Us Closer To What We Want To Communicate: Saying What We Intend, Or Trying To Say The Opposite?

Cruelty Depends On An Understanding Of Cruelty, And The Ability To Choose Against It. Or To Choose To Ignore It.

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.

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.

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.

I Said I Kicked A French Chicken In The Stomach Once." "huh?" "it Said, 'oeuf.'" "what Is That?" "it's A Joke. Do You Want To Hear Another, Or Have You Already Had Un Oeuf?

From Space, Astronauts Can See People Making Love As A Tiny Speck Of Light. Not Light, Exactly, But A Glow That Could Be Confused For Light - A Coital Radiance That Takes Generations To Pour Like Honey Through The Darkness To The Astronaut's Eyes. In About One And A Half Centuries - After The Lovers Who Made The Glow Will Have Long Since Been Laid Permanently On Their Backs - The Metropolitan Cities Will Be Seen From Space. They Will Glow All Year. Smaller Cities Will Also Be Seen, But With Great Difficulty. Towns Will Be Virtually Impossible To Spot. Individual Couples Invisible.

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.

We've Made Science Experiments Of Ourselves And Our Children.

Is That Growing Old? Or Is It Something Worse?

You Need To Have A Reader's Sympathy In Order To Accomplish Anything. It's Like At A Reading, I Find It's Better To Read Something Funny Than To Read Something Tragic. It Just Goes Over Better Because You Have A Finite Amount Of Time With Somebody. Of Course, In A Book, You Have A Lot Of Time. But You Still Do Want To Make A Certain Impression Right When You Begin.

Family Are The People Who Must Make You Feel Ashamed When You Are Deserving Of Shame.

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.

The More You Love Someone, He Came To Think, The Harder It Is To Tell Them. It Surprised Him That Strangers Didn't Stop Each Other On The Street To Say I Love You.

It Was One Of The Best Days Of My Life, A Day During Which I Lived My Life And Didn't Think About My Life At All.

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.

Everything Is Illuminated

They Reciprocated The Great And Saving Lie--that Our Love For Things Is Greater Than Our Lover For Our Love For Things--willfully Playing The Parts They Wrote For Themselves, Willfully Creating And Believing Fictions Necessary For Life.

Weeks Passed Like Boats Waiting To Sail Into The Starless Dawn, We Were Full Of Aimless Endless Darkness.

I Don't Think That There Are Any Limits To How Excellent We Could Make Life Seem.

I'm A Vegetarian. You're A What? I Don't Eat Meat. How Can You Not Eat Meat? I Just Don't. He Says He Does Not Eat Meat. What? No Meat? No Meat. Steak? No... Chickens! No... And What About The Sausage? No, No Sausage, No Meat! He Says He Does Not Eat Any Meat. Not Even Sausage? I Know! What Is Wrong With Him? What Is Wrong With You? Nothing, I Just Don't Eat Meat!

Living On A Planet Of Fixed Size Requires Compromise, And While We Are The Only Party Capable Of Negotiating, We Are Not The Only Party At The Table. We've Never Claimed More, And We've Never Had Less.

We Live In A World Made Up More Of Story Than Stuff. We Are Creatures Of Memory More Than Reminders, Of Love More Than Likes. Being Attentive To The Needs Of Others Might Not Be The Point Of Life, But It Is The Work Of Life. It Can Be Messy, And Painful, And Almost Impossibly Difficult. But It Is Not Something We Give. It Is What We Get In Exchange For Having To Die.

I've Never Particularly Liked Bankers.

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.

Hunting Will Never Feed Lots Of People; It Will Always Be A Hobby.

It's The Tragedy Of Loving, You Can't Love Anything More Than Something You Miss.

But What She Was Really Trying To Say Was This: I Like Music Better Than Anything In The World, After You.

Your Dad Didn't Die, So I Won't Be Able To Explain It To You.

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.

Imagine Being Served A Plate Of Sushi. But This Plate Also Holds All Of The Animals That Were Killed For Your Serving Of Sushi. The Plate Might Have To Be Five Feet Across.

I Didn't Feel Empty. I Wished I'd Felt Empty. ... I Wanted To Be Empty Like An Overturned Pitcher. But I Was Full Like A Stone.

...and When Is Enough Proof Enough?

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.

Oh,' She Said. 'i Have Never Seen A Jew Before. Can I See His Horns?

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.

Choosing Leaf Or Flesh, Factory Farm Or Family Farm, Does Not In Itself Change The World, But Teaching Ourselves, Our Children, Our Local Communities, And Our Nation To Choose Conscience Over Ease Can.

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?

His Voice Was Handsome And Broken, Like A Cobblestone Street.

Cobblestone Streets

It Broke My Heart Into More Pieces Than My Heart Was Made Of, Why Can't People Say What They Mean At The Time?

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.)

It's A Good Rule Of Thumb, It Seems To Me: If You're Not Allowed To See Where Something Comes From, Don't Put It In Your Mouth.

Most Of The Times That I Think About My Relationship To Judaism, I Not Only Accuse Myself Of A Shallowness, But I Feel Certain That There's A Shallowness There. That's Not A Bad Thing, Really.

I Regret How Much I Believed In The Future.

I'm Interested In The Kind Of Religion That Makes Life Harder. I'm Not So Interested In The Comforting Kind Of Religion.

Everything Is The Way It Is Because Everything Was The Way It Was. Sometimes I Feel Ensnared In This, As If No Matter What I Do, What Will Come Has Already Been Fixed.

Do You Have Any Coffee?'...'it Stunts My Growth, And I'm Afraid Of Death.

Afraid Of Death

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.

She Maintained A Careful Balance By Her Window, Never Allowing The Men To Come Too Close, Never Allowing Them To Stray Too Far.

If God Exists, He Is Not To Be Believed In.

I'd Lost Count Of The Disappointments.

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

In The Past Seven Years Of Love-making He Had Heard The Words "i Love You" So Many Times: From The Mouths Of Widows And Children, From Prostitutes, Family Friends, Travelers, And Adulterous Wives. Women Said "i Love You" Without His Ever Speaking. "the More You Love Someone," He Came To Think, "the Harder It Is To Tell Them." It Surprised Him That Strangers Didn't Stop Each Other On The Street To Say "i Love You".

September 11 Had Such A Strong Visual Component, The Most Visually Documented Event In Human History. Nothing's Ever Been Seen By As Many People As That Was. Our Experiences Of The Day, Our Memories Of The Day Are Just So Tied Up In Images Of Buildings Falling And Bodies Falling.

Each Day Has Been Chained To The Previous One. But The Weeks Have Wings. Anyone Who Believes That A Second Is Faster Than A Decade Did Not Live My Life.

Shyness Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Want.

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.

I'm Not Funny. People Assume That Because My Books Are Funny, I'll Be Funny In Real Life. It's The Inevitable Disappointment Of Meeting Me.

I Got Incredibly Heavy Boots About How Relatively Insignificant Life Is, And How, Compared To The Universe And Compared To Time, It Didn’t Even Matter If I Existed At All.

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.

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.

It Can Be Challenge Enough To Have To Eat With Myself.

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.

I Wanted So Much To Have A Life. Even Just Once, Even For A Second.

The Books Could Be Completely Worthless, And Things We Don't Even Read Now Could Be Considered The Most Important Books.

We Are Breeding Creatures Incapable Of Surviving In Any Place Other Than The Most Artificial Settings. We Have Focused The Awesome Power Of Modern Genetic Knowledge To Bring Into Being Animals That Suffer More.

In The Morning, When The Nothing Vase Casts A Something Shadow, Like The Memory Of Someone You've Lost, What Can You Say About That?

Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

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.

I Couldn't Speak The Language Of His Feelings

...there Are Only Some Many Times You Can Utter "it Does Not Hurt" Before It Begins To Hurt Even More Than The Hurt.

The Word Vegetarian, I Think, Does A Disservice Because There Are A Lot Of People Who Care But Maybe Don't Care, Or Can't Care In An Ultimate Way. If You Think About Environmentalism, Nobody Would Ask, "are You An Environmentalist Or Not?" The Question Doesn't Make Any Sense.

I Think And Think And Think, I‘ve Thought Myself Out Of Happiness One Million Times, But Never Once Into It.

To Remember My Values, I Need To Lose Certain Tastes And Find Other Handles For The Memories That They Once Helped Me Carry.

He Wrote, Are You Ok? I Told Him, My Eyes Are Crummy. He Wrote, But Are You Ok? I Told Him, That's A Very Complicated Question. He Wrote, That's A Very Simple Answer. I Asked, Are You Ok? He Wrote, Some Mornings I Wake Up Feeling Grateful.

The Only Thing More Painful Than Being An Active Forgetter Is To Be An Inert Rememberer.

Books Are For Those Without Real Lives, He Thought. And They Are No Real Replacement.

As Long As I Am Thinking, I Am Alive.

Well, What I Don't Get Is Why Do We Exist? I Don't Mean How, But Why.' I Watched The Fireflies Of His Thoughts Orbit His Head. He Said, 'we Exist Because We Exist. . .we Could Imagine All Sorts Of Universes Like This One, But This Is The One That Happened.

I Tried The Key In All The Doors, Even Though He Said He Didn't Recognize It. It's Not That I Didn't Trust Him, Becuase I Did. It's That At The End Of My Search I Wanted To Be Able To Say: I Don't Know How I Could Have Tried Harder.

Art Art 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?

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?

Was His Death An Essential Stage In The Continuation Of His Life?

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 Strongly We Will Want To Follow Our Best Instincts.

I Want To Talk About God In A Literary Way. But I Think I Would Have A Very Hard Time Praying To God.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Compromising. Even If You Compromise Almost Everything.

She Repeats Things Until They Are True, Or Until She Can't Tell Whether They Are True Or Not. She Has Become An Expert At Confusing What Is With What Was With What Should Be With What Could Be.

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.

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

...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.

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other, How Many Imposters Do I Have? Do We All Make The Same Mistakes, Or Has One Of Us Gotten It Right, Or Even Just A Bit Less Wrong, Am I The Imposter?

What Does It Remember Like?

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other.

I Wish My Days Could Be Washed Away Like The Chalk Lines Of My Days.

Just About Every Children's Book In My Local Bookstore Has An Animal For Its Hero. But Then, Only A Few Feet Away In The Cookbook Section, Just About Every Cookbook Includes Recipes For Cooking Animals. Is There A More Illuminating Illustration Of Our Paradoxical Relationship With The Nonhuman World?

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.

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.

When You Look Up 'hilarious' In The Dictionary, There's A Picture Of You.

Abraham Responds "here I Am" When God Asks Him To Sacrifice His Son, And He Answers "here I Am" When His Son Asks Him About What Is Happening. It's A Paradoxical Moment. He Can't Be Fully Present For His God Or His Son.

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.

The Dissolution Of A Family, Global Crisis Creates The Massive Fracture, Not Only In The Middle East But Between America And Israel, Between Europe And Israel, Between American Jews And Israeli Jews. The Distances Seem To Be Widening Wherever You Look.

Sometimes I Imagined Stitching All Of Our Little Touches Together. How Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Fingers Brushing Against Each Other Does It Take To Make Love? Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

Sometimes I Can Hear My Bones Straining Under The Weight Of All The Lives I'm Not Living.

The Bruises Go Away, And So Does How You Hate, And So Does The Feeling That Everything You Receive From Life Is Something You Have Earned.

There Are More Obese People In The World Than Starving People. As China And India Start To Develop Our Eating Habits - And Not By Accident But Because Agribusiness Is Going Over There And Imposing Our Habits On Them - If The Population Doesn't Increase At All, We'll Have To Raise Twice As Many Animals As We Do.

If It Had And Answer, It Wouldn't Really Be Love, Would It?

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.

I Love Sushi, I Love Fried Chicken, I Love Steak. But There Is A Limit To My Love.

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?

I Asked My Schoolmate Mary To Write A Letter To Me. She Was Funny And Full Of Life. She Liked To Run Around Her Empty House Without Any Clothes On, Even Once She Was Too Old For That. Nothing Embarrassed Her. I Admired That So Much, Because Everything Embarrassed Me, And That Hurt Me. She Loved To Jump On Her Bed. She Jumped On Her Bed For So Many Years That One Afternoon, While I Watched Her Jump, The Seams Burst. Feathers Filled The Small Room. Our Laughter Kept The Feathers In The Air. I Thought About Birds. Could They Fly If There Wasn’t Someone, Somewhere, Laughing?

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.

The End Of The World Has Come Often, And Continues To Come.

End Of The World

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.

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

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.

What Is Being Awake If Not Interpreting Our Dreams, Or Dreaming If Not Interpreting Our Wake?

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.

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.

I Thought, It's A Shame That We Have To Live, But It's A Tragedy That We Get To Live Only One Life, Because If I'd Had Two Lives, I Would Have Spent One Of Them With Her.

Something Having Been Done Just About Everywhere Just About Always Is No Kind Of Justification For Doing It Now.

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.

Life Was A Small Negative Space Cut Out Of The Eternal Solidity, And For The First Time, It Felt Precious - Not Like All Of The Words That Had Come To Mean Nothing, But Like The Last Breath Of A Drowning Victim.

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.

The Philosopher Elaine Scarry Has Observed That "beauty Always Takes Place In The Particular." Cruelty, On The Other Hand, Prefers Abstraction.

She Wants To Know If I Love Her, That's All Anyone Wants From Anyone Else, Not Love Itself But The Knowledge That Love Is There, Like New Batteries In The Flashlight In The Emergency Kit In The Hall Closet.

[she] Always Knew He Was A Fiction But Believed In Him Anyway.

Of Course Food Has An Important Cultural Use In Families, But There Are Things That Have More Important Cultural Uses In Families, And Broadening The Conversation Out Simply From What's Reasonable Also Allows In Other Things.

There's A Really Wonderful Book Called "man Is Not Alone" By Abraham Joshua Heschel, Which Makes The Case That Everybody Is Religious. You Know, We've Just Been Sort Of Too Vigilant About Our Terminology And Our Definitions And Too Precious About It. But There's Nobody Who Is Indifferent To The Experience Of Standing In Front Of An Ocean At Night. There's Nobody Who Is Indifferent To The Feeling Of, You Know, Lying On Your Back And Looking Up At The Night Sky.

And She Would Say, "today You Believe In God?" And He Would Say, "today I Believe In Love".

Memory Was Supposed To Fill The Time, But It Made Time A Hole To Be Filled.

I'm So Afraid Of Losing Something I Love That I Refuse To Love Anything

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.

Feathers Filled The Small Room. Our Laughter Kept The Feathers In The Air. I Thought About Birds. Could They Fly Is There Wasn't Someone, Somewhere, Laughing?

[...]it Is As If After Surviving So Much, There Was No Longer Reason To Survive.

That’s All Anyone Wants From Anyone Else, Not Love Itself But The Knowledge That Love Is There.

Murdering Someone Would Surely Prove That You Are Capable Of Killing, But It Wouldn't Be The Most Reasonable Way To Understand Why You Shouldn't Do It.

We Live In A World Made Up More Of Story Than Stuff. We Are Creatures Of Memory More Than Reminders, Of Love More Than Likes.

She Saw Through The Shell Of Me Into The Center Of Me

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.

I Knew That Our Time Together Was Almost Over, I Asked Her If She Liked Sports, She Asked Me If I Liked Chess, I Asked Her If She Liked Fallen Trees, She Went Home With Her Father, The Center Of Me Followed Her, But I Was Left With The Shell Of Me, I Needed To See Her Again, I Couldn't Explain My Need To Myself, And That's Why It Was Such A Beautiful Need, There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

I Tried To Think About Other Things. I Tried To Invent Optimistic Inventions. But The Pessimistic Ones Were Extremely Loud.

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?

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.

Whether We're Talking About Fish Species, Pigs, Or Some Other Eaten Animal, Is Such Suffering The Most Important Thing In The World? Obviously Not. But That's Not The Question. Is It More Important That Sushi, Bacon, Or Chicken Nuggets? That's The Question.

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.

I Write Because I Want To End My Loneliness. Books Make People Less Alone. That, Before And After Everything Else, Is What Books Do. They Show Us That Conversations Are Possible Across Distances.

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.

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.

She Extended A Hand That I Didn't Know How To Take, So I Broke Its Fingers With My Silence.

It’s Much Easier To Be Cruel Than One Might Think.

The World Is A Big Place," He Said, "but So Is The Inside Of An Apartment!

I Hated Myself For Going, Why Couldn't I Be The Kind Of Person Who Stays?

Why Do Beautiful Songs Make You Sad?' 'because They Aren't True.' 'never?' 'nothing Is Beautiful And True.

Kids Are A Great Analogy. You Want Your Kids To Grow Up, And You Don't Want Your Kids To Grow Up. You Want Your Kids To Become Independent Of You, But It's Also A Parent's Worst Nightmare: That They Won't Need You. It's Like The Real Tragedy Of Parenting.

We Could Imagine All Sorts Of Universes Unlike This One, But This Is The One That Happened.

The French, Who Love Their Dogs, Sometimes Eat Their Horses. The Spanish, Who Love Their Horses, Sometimes Eat Their Cows. The Indians, Who Love Their Cows, Sometimes Eat Their Dogs.

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.

"my Insides Don't Match Up With My Outsides." "do Anyone's Inside And Outsides Match Up?" "i Don't Know. I'm Only Me." "maybe That's What A Person's Personality Is: The Difference Between The Inside And The Outside."

People Hurt Each Other. That's What People Do.

How Beautiful Is Forgetting! What Relief It Would Be For The World To Lose Some Of Its Contents.

How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her.

People Around The World Were Moving From One Place To Another. No One Was Staying.

Trending Author

Constantin Brancusi

Caprice Bourret

Category