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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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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Find A Printer Paper

Jonathan Safran Foer

...

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.

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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.

Ironically, The Utterly Unselective Omnivore -- "i'm Easy; I'll Eat Anything" -- Can Appear More Socially Sensitive Than The Individual Who Tries To Eat In A Way That Is Good For Society.

My Boots Were So Heavy That I Was Glad There Was A Column Beneath Us. How Could Such A Lonely Person Have Been Living So Close To Me My Whole Life? If I Had Known, I Would Have Gone Up To Keep Him Company.

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.

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

I Dreamt Four Nights Ago Of Clock Hands Descending From The Universe Like Rain, Of The Moon As A Green Eye, Of Mirrors And Insects, Of A Love That Never Withdrew. It Was Not The Feeling Of Completeness That I So Needed, But The Feeling Of Not Being Empty.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The Un Special Envoy On Food Called It A 'crime Against Humanity' To Funnel 100 Million Tons Of Grain And Corn To Ethanol When 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 Human Who Are Living In Dire Poverty?

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

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

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

I Think It's Very Pretty. Can It Be Pretty If No One Thinks It's Pretty? I Think It's Pretty. If You're The Only One? That's Pretty Pretty. And What About The Boys? Don't You Want Them To Think You're Pretty? I Wouldn't Want A Boy To Think I Was Pretty Unless He Was The Kind Of Boy Who Thought I Was Pretty.

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

I've Never Particularly Liked Bankers.

It Might Sound Naive To Suggest That Whether You Order A Chicken Patty Or A Veggie Burger Is A Profoundly Important Decision. Then Again, It Certainly Would Have Sounded Fantastic If In The 1950's You Were Told That Where You Sat In A Restaurant Or On A Bus Could Begin To Uproot Racism.

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.

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.

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?

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

Chickens Can Do Many Things, But They Cannot Make Sophisticated Deals With Humans.

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.

I Ran Rather Than Walked, Anxious To Lose My Way. All I Wanted Was To Be Unsure.

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.

Everyone Is Always In Need Of Something That Another Person Can Give, Be It Undivided Attention, A Kind Word Or Deep Empathy. There Is No Better Use Of A Life Than To Be Attentive To Such Needs.

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?

Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

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

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Not A Thing That You Can Imagine. It Only Is. After That, There Can Be No Imagining.

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.

Whether We Change Our Lives Or Do Nothing, We Have Responded. To Do Nothing Is To Do Something.

So She Had To Satisfy Herself With The Idea Of Love - Loving 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.

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.

People Who Become Used To Saying Little Become Used To Feeling Little.

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.

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

But Come. No Explaining Or Mending. Be Beside Me Somewhere.

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

Even If I Don't Like What I Am, I Know What I Am. My Children Like What They Are, But They Don't Know What They Are. So Tell Me Which Is Worse.

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.

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".

I Thought About All Of The Things That Everyone Ever Says To Each Other, And How Everyone Is Going To Die, Whether It's In A Millisecond, Or Days, Or Months, Or 76.5 Years, If You Were Just Born. Everything That's Born Has To Die, Which Means Our Lives Are Like Skyscrapers. The Smoke Rises At Different Speeds, But They're All On Fire, And We're All Trapped.

The Only Thing Worse Than Being Sad Is For Others To Know You Are Sad.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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

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

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

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."

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.

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone.

Songs Are As Sad As The Listener.

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

And Also, There Are So Many Times When You Need To Make A Quick Escape, But Humans Don't Have Their Own Wings, Or Not Yet, Anyway, So What About A Birdseed Shirt?

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

Succotash My Cocker Spaniel, You Fudging Crevasse-hole Dipshiitake!

...because He Had Been Waiting For Someone To Come Back To Him, So Every Time Someone Knocked On The Door, He Couldn't Stop Himself From Hoping It Might Be That Person, Even Though He Knew He Shouldn't Hope.

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.

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?

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.

Please Be Truthful, But Also Please Be Benevolent, Please.

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.

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.

Ninety-eight Percent Of All The Soy That's Raised Goes To Livestock. So People Make Fun Of Vegetarians For Being Tofu Eaters, But No One Eats Tofu Like Steak Eaters, By A Long Shot. It's Also Funny That Tofu Is Held Up As What A Vegetarian Eats. I Mean Maybe I Eat Tofu Once A Month, But Other Than That, Never. All Of It, Statistically Speaking, Is Going To Livestock.

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.

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.

What Were We Spending So Much Time Doing If Not Getting To Know Each Other?

Getting To Know Each Other

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

End Of The World

Grandfather Informs Me That Is Not Possible.

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.

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

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.

I Made Up My Mind That Nothing,, Nothing Was Going To Stop Me Not Even Me.

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.

I Don't Mind If Smiles Come At My Expense, I'm A Small Price To Pay.

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

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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

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.

Raising Your Kids Vegetarian Is A Great Way To Encourage Them To Do The Opposite Of What You Want! But The Goal Is Not To Have Them Have The Same Values That I Have. It's To Have Them Act On Their Values.

...and When Is Enough Proof Enough?

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.

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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

Cobblestone Streets

Why Is Taste, The Crudest Of Our Senses, Exempted From The Ethical Rules That Govern Our Other Senses?

Animal Experimentation

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.

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

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.

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

I Was Of The Opinion That The Past Is Past, And Like All That Is Not Now It Should Remain Buried Along The Side Of Our Memories.

It Was Terrible. All Of The Things We Couldn't Share. The Room Was Filled With Conversations We Weren't Having.

It Is My Great Hope That Our Paths, However Long And Winding, Will Cross Again.

Silently The Animal Catches Our Glance. The Animal Looks At Us, And Whether We Look Away (from The Animal, Our Plate, Our Concern, Ourselves) Or Not, We Are Exposed. Whether We Change Our Lives Or Do Nothing, We Have Responded. To Do Nothing Is To Do Something

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.

What Kind Of World Would We Create If Three Times A Day We Activated Our Compassion And Reason As We Sat Down To Eat, If We Had The Moral Imagination And The Pragmatic Will To Change Our Most Fundamental Act Of Consumption?

Food Is Not Just What We Put In Our Mouths To Fill Up; It Is Culture And Identity. Reason Plays Some Role In Our Decisions About Food, But It's Rarely Driving The Car.

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.

For A Long Time, I Thought I Would Like To Be A Doctor. Such A Good Profession. So Explicitly Good. Never A Waste Of Time.

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

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.

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.

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.

Why Do I Write? It's Not That I Want People To Think I Am Smart, Or Even That I Am A Good Writer. I Write Because I Want To End My Loneliness.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

What Do Babies Dream Of? She Must Be Dreaming Of The Before-life, Just As I Dream Of The Afterlife.

I Always Write Out Of A Need To Read Something, Rather Than A Need To Write Something.

Why Does Watching A Dog Be A Dog Fill One With Happiness?

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 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?

What If I Never Stop Inventing?

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.

People Don’t Care Enough. They Don’t Get Worked Up Enough. They Don’t Get Angry Enough. They Don’t Get Passionate Enough. I’d Rather Somebody Hate What I Do Than Be Indifferent To It.

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

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.

She Had Fallen In Love So Many Times That She Began To Suspect She Was Not Falling In Love At All, But Doing Something Much More Ordinary.

Falling In Love

I Hope You Never Think About Anything As Much As I Think About You.

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.

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.

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?

It's Rarely Talked About, But Hunting For Sport Is Just About As Vile As We Humans Get.

If We Are Not Given The Option To Live Without Violence, We Are Given The Choice To Center Our Meals Around Harvest Or Slaughter, Husbandry Or War. We Have Chosen Slaughter. We Have Chosen War. That's The Truest Version Of Our Story Of Eating Animals. Can We Tell A New Story?

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.

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.

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

When We Eat Factory-farmed Meat We Live, Literally, On Tortured Flesh. Increasingly, That Tortured Flesh Is Becoming Our Own.

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.

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.

I Hope That One Day You Will Have The Experience Of Doing Something You Do Not Understand For Someone You Love.

Someone You Love

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

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

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

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

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.

Isn't 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?

I Kept Thinking How They Were All Names Of Dead People, And How Names Are Basically The Only Thing Dead People Keep.

Things Were Happening Around Us, But Nothing Was Happening Between Us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Would Be Possible, In Theory, For Life And Art To Be Reversed.

My Test For Writing Is Always, Is This Fun Or Does It Feel Like A Job? Is It Moving Me? Or Am I Just Fulfilling My Own Expectations - Or Even Worse, Somebody Else's?

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.

Falling In Love

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.

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.

Consumers Are Going To Have Get Used To Eating Less Meat - To Paying More For Better Quality Meat And Eating Significantly Less Of It.

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

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.

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?

... 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.

Also, I Designed A Pretty Fascinating Bracelet, Where You Put A Rubber Band Around Your Favorite Book Of Poems For A Year, And Then You Take It Off And Wear It.

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.

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

I Put My Hand On The Doorknob Because I Thought Maybe Her Hand Was On The Doorknob On The Other Side.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

One Day You Will Do Things For Me That You Hate. That Is What It Means To Be Family.

Sometimes People Who Seem Good End Up Being Not As Good As You Might Have Hoped, You Know?

I Realized That Your Mother Couldn't See The Emptiness, She Couldn't See Anything...all Of The Words I'd Written To Her Over All Of Those Years, Had I Never Said Anything To Hear At All?

The Factory Farm Has Succeeded By Divorcing People From Their Food, Eliminating Farmers, And Ruling Agriculture By Corporate Fiat.

There Were Things I Wanted To Tell Him. But I Knew They Would Hurt Him. So I Buried Them, And Let Them Hurt Me.

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.

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

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?

You Cannot Protect Yourself From Sadness Without Protecting Yourself From Happiness.

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

I Have Made My Own Choice, Which Is Vegetarianism, But It's Not The Choice I'm Imposing On Anybody Else.

I Wasn’t Having Second Thoughts, But I Was Having Thoughts.

Second Thoughts

Fiction Works When It Makes A Reader Feel Something Strongly.

I Want An Infinitely Blank Book And The Rest Of Time.

Try To Live So That You Can Always Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Am Sure People Tell You This Constantly But If You Looked Up 'incredibly Beautiful' In The Dictionary There Would Be A Picture Of You.

I Got Tired, I Told Him. Not Worn Out, But Worn Through. Like One Of Those Wives Who Wakes Up One Morning And Says I Can't Bake Any More Bread.

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.

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