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[…] 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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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[…] But I Believe

Jonathan Safran Foer

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[…] 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.

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Our Love Was The Affliction For Which Only Our Love Was The Cure.

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?

I Wanted To Cry But I Didn't, I Probably Should Have Cried, I Should Have Drowned Us There In The Room Ending Our Suffering.

I Think After You Live It's Like Before You Lived.

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone.

He Was Someone Whom Everyone Admired And Liked But Whom Nobody Knew. He Was Like A Book That You Could Feel Good Holding, That You Could Talk About Without Ever Having Read, That You Could Recommend.

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.

Feeding My Children Is Not Like Feeding Myself: It Matters More.

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.

I Am Doing Something I Hate For You. This Is What It Means To Be In Love.

The Writing Itself Is No Big Deal. The Editing, And Even More Than That, The Self-doubt, Is Excruciatingly Impossible.

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

Part Of Living Your Life Is An Awareness Of The Opportunities That Can Be Missed And An Awareness That Time Moves In One Direction.

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

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

I Would Have Done Anything For Him. Maybe That Was My Sickness. We Made Love In Nothing Places And Turned The Lights Off. It Felt Like Crying. We Could Not Look At Each Other. It Always Had To Be From Behind. Like That First Time. And I Knew He Wasn't Thinking Of Me. He Squeezed My Sides So Hard, And Pushed So Hard. Like He Was Trying To Push Me Through To Somewhere Else. Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

Just Because You're An Atheist, That Doesn't Mean You Wouldn't Love For Things To Have Reasons For Why They Are.

I Felt It Very Moving To Feel His Touch, And To Remember That Hands Can Also Show Love.

And I Wouldn't Say No To Something Sweet.

Something Sweet

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone. There Was No Invention To Get Around That, And So I Felt, That Night, Like The Turtle That Everything Else In The Universe Was On Top Of.

What About Little Microphones? What If Everyone Swallowed Them, And They Played The Sounds Of Our Hearts Through A Little Speaker. [...] I Wonder If Everyone's Hearts Would Start To Beat At The Same 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.)

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.

Is There Really Anyone, Besides Rudy Giuliani, Who Prefers The New Times Square?

The Paper, The Stapler, The Staples, The Tape. It Makes Me Sick. Physical Things. Forty Years Of Loving Someone Becomes Staples And Tape.

...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.

People Who Want To Find A Place Of Rest, Want To Find An Integrated Personality, Sense Of Self, Want Fewer Fractures In Their Lives.

We All Choose Things, And We Also All Choose Against Things. I Want To Be The Kind Of Person Who Chooses For More Than Chooses Against.

My Impression Is That Staying Together As A Couple Does Not Correspond To The Challenges Themselves, But Whether The Very Idea Of Breaking Up Is An Option On The Table. If It Is, Then Some People Take It. If It's Not, Then They Will Keep Working At It. You Must Know People Who Were Terribly Suited Who Make It Work. And There Are Couples Who Seem Perfectly Suited That Break Up. It's A Mystery To Everyone.

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

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.

...he Enclosed Pieces Of String That He Used To Measure Out His Body--his Head, Thigh, Forearm, Finger, Neck, Everything. He Wanted Me To Sleep With Them Under My Pillow. He Said That When He Came Back, We Would Remeasure His Body Against The String As Proof That He Hadn't Changed.

These Little Daily Choices That We're So Used To Thinking Are Irrelevant Are The Most Important Thing We Do All Day Long.

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.

I Wanted To Hit Him. I Wanted To Hold Him. I Wanted To Shout Myself Into His Ear.

Only Humans Can Cry Tears.

In America Right Now, We Use Words Like 'smart' To Talk About Bombs. American Rhetoric Is Grounded In Ideas Of Capital-g Good, Capital-e Evil, And It's Very Clear Who Is On Which Side. But In A Book You Can Do Just The Opposite. You Can Use All Lower-case Words.

Sadness Of Not Knowing Enough Words To [express What You Mean].

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.

Time Was Passing Like A Hand Waving From A Train That I Wanted To Be On.

I've Never Particularly Liked Bankers.

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

You Only Get To Keep What You Refuse To Let Go Of.

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.

Health Professionals

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.

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

While It Is Always Possible To Wake A Person Who's Sleeping, No Amount Of Noise Will Wake A Person Who Is Pretending To Be Asleep.

She Wanted More, More Slang, More Figures Of Speech, The Bee's Knees, The Cats Pajamas, Horse Of A Different Color, Dog-tired, She Wanted To Talk Like She Was Born Here, Like She Never Came From Anywhere Else

And The General Shot My Sister. I Could Not Look At Her, But I Remember The Sound Of When She Hit The Ground. I Hear That Sound When Things Hit The Ground Still. Anything.' If I Could, I Would Make It So Nothing Ever Hit The Ground Again.

There Are Two Kinds Of Sculptures. There's The Kind That Subtracts: Michelangelo Starts With A Block Of Marble And Chips Away. And Then There Is The Kind That Adds, Building With Clay, Piling It On. The Way I Write Novels Is To Keep Piling On And Piling On And Piling On.

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

I Can Only Hold On To The Things I Want To Lose.

Be The Instrument Playing The Sound Of Your Life's Passing

I Would Have Done Anything For Him. Maybe That Was My Sickness.

Every Factory-farmed Animal Is, As A Practice, Treated In Ways That Would Be Illegal If It Were A Dog Or A Cat.

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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.

We Looked At Each Other Until It Felt Like Everything Would Burst Into Flames

I Can't Even Say 'hair Pie,'' I Told Him, 'unless I'm Talking About An Actual Pie Made Out Of Rabbits.

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

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.

I Could Not Believe In A God That Would Challenge Faith Like This.

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.

If It Weren't My Life, I Wouldn't Have Believed It.

There Has Yet To Be A Human To Survive A Span Of History Without At Least One End Of The World.

End Of The World

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

We Cracked Up Together, Which Was Necessary, Because She Loved Me Again.

I'm Deeply Curious About Jewish Things. I've Toyed Around With The Idea Of Going To Rabbinical School.

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

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

....worthy Would-be Worlds Of Words, Whorls Of Working Wonder.

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.

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.

Missing Someone

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.

Everything Else Happened - Why Not The Things That Could Have?

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

(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.)

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

I Thought For A Minute, And Then I Got Heavy, Heavy Boots.

Not Responding Is A Response--we Are Equally Responsible For What We Don't Do. In The Case Of Animal Slaughter, To Throw Your Hands In The Air Is To Wrap Your Fingers Around A Knife Handle.

But I Still Couldn't Figure Out What It All Meant. The More I Found Out, The Less I Understood.

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.

She Let Out A Laugh, And Then She Put Her Hand Over Her Mouth, Like She Was Angry At Herself For Forgetting Her Sadness.

She Said, 'believe It Or Not, I Used To Be Idealistic.' I Asked Her What 'idealistic' Meant. 'it Means You Live By What You Think Is Right.' 'you Don't Do That Anymore?' 'there Are Questions I Don't Ask Anymore.

My Dream Went All The Way Back To The Beginning. The Rain Rose Into The Clouds, And The Animals Descended The Ramp.

I Saw Herschel And He Saw Me And We Stood Next To Each Other Because That Is What Friends Do In The Presence Of Evil Or Love.

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.

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

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

I Took The World Into Me, Rearranged It, And Sent It Back Out As A Question: "do You Like Me?

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!

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

In My Family, Father Is The World Champion At Ending Conversations.

Flea-market Vendors Are Frozen Mid-haggle. Middle-aged Women Are Frozen In The Middle Of Their Lives. The Gavels Of Frozen Judges Are Frozen Between Guilt And Innocence. On The Ground Are The Crystals Of The Frozen First Breaths Of Babies, And Those Of The Last Gasps Of The Dying.

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.

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

The Sky Slowly Pulled Up Its Blue Dress To Reveal Night.

How Would You Judge An Artist Who Mutilated Animals In A Gallery Because It Was Visually Arresting? How Riveting Would The Sound Of A Tortured Animal Need To Be To Make You Want To Hear It That Badly? Try To Imagine Any End Other Than Taste For Which It Would Be Justifiable To Do What We Do To Farmed Animals.

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

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.

I'm Sorry For My Inability To Let Unimportant Things Go, For My Inability To Hold On To The Important Things.

Unimportant Things

I Regret How Much I Believed In The Future.

I Am Not A Bad Person. I Am A Good Person Who Has Lived In A Bad Time." Alex's Grandfather..everything Is Illuminated

As A Writer, Putting Words On The Page Is How I Pay Attention.

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.

We Had Everything To Say To Each Other, But No Ways To Say It

When It Comes To Meat, Change Is Almost Always Cast As An Absolute. You Are A Vegetarian Or You Are Not.

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.

I Think It's A Greater Risk Not To Write About 911. If You're In My Position - A New Yorker Who Felt The Event Very Deeply And A Writer Who Wants To Write About Things He Feels Deeply About - I Think It's Risky To Avoid What's Right In Front Of You.

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.

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.

We Believed In Our Grandmother’s Cooking More Fervently Than We Believed In God.

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

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

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.

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

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.

It Is Unrealistic To Think You Can Have An Inflexible Identity That Never Has To Give Or Take Or Make Compromises.

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.

People Who Care About Animals Tend To Care About People. They Don't Care About Animals To The Exclusion Of People. Caring Is Not A Finite Resource And, Even More Than That, It's Like A Muscle: The More You Exercise It, The Stronger It Gets.

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.

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

[…] 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.

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.

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

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 Didn't Intend To Write About Totems Or People Searching. I Tried Not To Constrain Myself, And This Is What I Ended Up With. There's This Great Auden Quote: "i Look At What I Write So I Can See What I Think."

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.

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

I Zipped Myself All The Way Into The Sleeping Bag Of Myself, Not Because I Was Hurt, And Not Because I Had Broken Something, But Because They Were Cracking Up.

Highs And Lows Make You Feel That Things Matter, But They're Nothing." "so What's Something?" "being Reliable Is Something. Being Good.

Our Relationship To The Environment Matters, Our Relationship To Animals Matters, And Our Relationship To Culture Matters.

One Of The Greatest Opportunities To Live Our Values-or Betray Them-lies In The Food We Put On Our Plates.

...accepting The Compromise Of The Way We Have Been, The Way We Are, And The Way We Will Likely Be...may We Live Together In Unwavering Love And Good Health, Amen.

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.

When I Was A Girl, My Life Was Music That Was Always Getting Louder. Everything Moved Me. A Dog Following A Stranger. That Made Me Feel So Much. A Calendar That Showed The Wrong Month. I Could Have Cried Over It. I Did. Where The Smoke From A Chimney Ended. How An Overturned Bottle Rested At The Edge Of A Table. 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.

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.

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. We Could Retell Our Stories And Make Them Better, More Representative Or Aspirational. Or We Could Choose To Tell Different Stories. The World Itself Had Another Chance.

Fiction Works When It Makes A Reader Feel Something Strongly.

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

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.

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

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

Afraid Of Death

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.

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.

Every Night Before Putting Her To Sleep, Yankel Counts Her Ribs, As If One Might Have Disappeared In The Course Of The Day And Become The Seed And Soil For Some New Companion To Steal Her Away From Him.

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.

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?

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.

I Never Confused What I Had With What I Was.

Well, Let Me Leave It At This: If God Does Exist, He Would Have A Great Deal Be Sad About. And If He Doesn’t Exist, Then That Too Would Make Him Quite Sad, I Imagine. So To Answer Your Question, God Must Be Sad.

I Love The Idea Of Books Being More Than Books, Or Being, Rather, Something Other Than Books.

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.

Love Me, Because Love Doesn't Exist, And I Have Tried Everything That Does.

Everything Is Illuminated

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.

The Secret Was A Hole In The Middle Of Me That Every Happy Thing Fell Into.

Oh, I'd Say I Like A Meal As Much As Anybody. But I Find A Certain Kind Of Foodiness Silly, Gluttonous And Embarrassing.

Being With Him Made My Brain Quiet. I Didn't Have To Invent A Thing.

Yesterday I Wanted To Turn Inside Out.

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.

I Said, 'i Need To Know How He Died.' He Flipped Back And Pointed At, 'why?' So I Can Stop Inventing How He Died. I'm Always Inventing.

I Know You Look Both Ways Before You Cross The Street, But I Want You To Look Both Ways A Second Time, Because I Told You To.

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.

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.

So Many People Enter And Leave Your Life! Hundreds Of Thousands Of People! You Have To Keep The Door Open So They Can Come In! But It Also Means You Have To Let Them Go!

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.

There Are A Lot Of Things That We Crave, There Are A Lot Of Things That Would Make Us Perhaps More Fulfilled In A Sensory Way That We Just Say No To.

What Does It Remember Like?

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

What Is Suffering? I'm Not Sure What It Is, But I Know That Suffering Is The Name We Give To The Origin Of All The Sighs, Screams, And Groans — Small And Large, Crude And Multifaceted — That Concern Us. The Word Defines Our Gaze Even More Than What We Are Looking At.

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.

For How Long Could We Fail Until We Surrendered?

I Looked At Everyone And Wondered Where They Came From, And Who They Missed, And What They Were Sorry For.

It’s Hard To Say Goodbye To The Place You’ve Lived. It Can Be As Hard As Saying Goodbye To A Person.

I’d Rather Somebody Hate What I Do Than Be Indifferent To It.

Everybody Knows The Competing Identities Of People Who Have Kids.

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.

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.

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

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

Sometimes One Simply Wants To Disappear.

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.

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.

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

The Only Way To Overcome Sadness Is To Consume It.

We Burned With Love For Ourselves, All Of Us, Starters Of The Fire We Suffered- Our Love Was The Affliction For Which Only Our Love Was The Cure.

My Life Story Is The Story Of Everyone I've Ever Met.

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".

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.

Books Are Slow, Books Are Quiet. The Internet Is Fast And Loud.

She Laughed Enough To Migrate An Entire Flock Of Birds. That Was How She Said Yes

Jed Perl Writes Precisely And Ecstatically. Antoine' S Alphabet Is A History And A Fairy Tale, A Work Of Criticism, And A Work Of Art.

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.

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 Voiceless--it Is A Test Of How We Act When No One Is Forcing Us To Act One Way Or Another.

Cher Marcel, Allô. I Am Oskar's Mom. I Have Thought About It A Ton, And I Have Decided That It Isn't Obvious Why Oskar Should Go To French Lessons, So He Will No Longer Be Going To Go See You On Sundays Like He Used To. I Want To Thank You Very Much For Everything You Have Taught Oskar, Particularly The Conditional Tense, Which Is Weird. Obviously, There's No Need To Call Me When Oskar Doesn't Come To His Lessons, Because I Already Know, Because This Was My Decision. Also, I Will Keep Sending You Checks, Because You Are A Nice Guy. Votre Ami Dévouée, Mademoiselle Schell.

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.

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.

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.

I Felt Suddenly Shy. I Was Not Used To Shy. I Was Used To Shame. Shyness Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Want. Shame Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Do Not Want.

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