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[grandfather] Would Manufacture Funnies With Grandmother Before She Died About How He Was In Love With Other Women Who Were Not Her. She Knew It Was Only Funnies Because She Would Laugh In Volumes. 'anna,' He Would Say, 'i Am Going To Marry That One With The Pink Hat.' And She Would Say, 'to Whom Are You Going To Marry Her?' And He Would Say, 'to Me.' I Would Laugh Very Much In The Back Seat, And She Would Say To Him, 'but You Are No Priest.' And He Would Say, 'i Am Today.' And She Would Say, 'today You Believe In God?' And He Would Say, 'today I Believe In Love.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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[grandfather] Would Manufacture Funnies

Jonathan Safran Foer

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[grandfather] Would Manufacture Funnies With Grandmother Before She Died About How He Was In Love With Other Women Who Were Not Her. She Knew It Was Only Funnies Because She Would Laugh In Volumes. 'anna,' He Would Say, 'i Am Going To Marry That One With The Pink Hat.' And She Would Say, 'to Whom Are You Going To Marry Her?' And He Would Say, 'to Me.' I Would Laugh Very Much In The Back Seat, And She Would Say To Him, 'but You Are No Priest.' And He Would Say, 'i Am Today.' And She Would Say, 'today You Believe In God?' And He Would Say, 'today I Believe In Love.

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

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How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her.

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I Started Carrying Blank Books Like This One Around, Which I Would Fill With All The Things I Couldn't Say.

The Images Of His Infinite Pasts And Infinite Futures Washed Over Him As He Waited, Paralyzed, In The Present.

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

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

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I Will Describe My Eyes And Then Begin The Story. My Eyes Are Blue And Resplendent. Now I Will Begin The Story.

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

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You Have To Do Something Bad To Do Something Good.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Second Thoughts

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And I Wouldn't Say No To Something Sweet.

Something Sweet

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

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All Really Great Artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett Or Joyce - You Are Never Indifferent To Them.

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

Getting To Know Each Other

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Not Responding Is A Response - We Are Equally Responsible For What We Don't Do.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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Once You Hear Something, You Can Never Return To The Time Before You Heard It.

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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.

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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.

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

Only A Few Months Into Our Marriage," Writes The Grandfather, "we Started Marking Off Areas In The Apartment As 'nothing Places,' In Which One Could Be Assured Of Complete Privacy, We Agreed That We Never Would Look At The Marked-off Zones, That They Would Be Nonexistent Territories In The Apartment In Which One Could Temporarily Cease To Exist.

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.

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.

It Seems Entirely Possible To Me That Horrible Things Can Be Going On Without Us Becoming Horrible People.

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

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.

You Do Not Have To Utter Anything You Do Not Want To Utter,” I Told Her, And She Said, “then I Would Never Utter Another Word Again.” “you Do Not Have To Do Anything That You Do Not Want To Do.” “then I Would Never Do Anything Again.

We Spent Our Lives Making Livings.

Making A Living

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?

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?

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.

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

None Of The Ways People Were Talking About September 11 Felt Right To Me. I Don't Buy Into The Way George W. Bush Talks About It. I Don't Buy Into The Way The 9/11 Commission Talks About It. It Isn't That I Don't Believe Them. It's Just That They're Not The Tellings For Me.

Why Didn't I Learn To Treat Everything Like It Was The Last Time. My Greatest Regret Was How Much I Believed In The Future.

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

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.

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

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The Only Way To Overcome Sadness Is To Consume It.

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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

Unimportant Things

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

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

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

It Is Better To Lose Than Never To Have Had.

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

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.

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

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.

And Here I Am, Instead Of There. I'm Sitting In This Library, Thousands Of Miles From My Life, Writing Another Letter I Know I Won't Be Able To Send, No Matter How Hard I Try And How Much I Want To. How Did That Boy Making Love Behind That Shed Become This Man Writing This Letter At This Table?

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 Realized I Was On A Something Island. 'how Did I Get Here,' I Wondered, Surrounded By Nothing, "and How Can I Get Back?

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

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

Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

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?

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

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.

...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.

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

We Laughed And Laughed, Together And Separately, Out Loud And Silently, We Were Determined To Ignore Whatever Needed To Be Ignored, To Build A New World From Nothing If Nothing In Our World Could Be Salvaged, 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow Was Over The Horizon, And Would Take An Entire Day To Reach.

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

(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.)

You Will Remember When A Bird Crashed Through The Window And Fell To The Floor. You Will Remember, Those Of You Who Were There, How It Jerked Its Wings Before Dying, And Left A Spot Of Blood On The Floor After It Was Removed. But Who Among You Was First To Notice The Negative Bird It Left In The Window? Who First Saw The Shadow That The Bird Left Behind, The Shadow That Drew Blood From Any Finger That Dared To Trace It, The Shadow That Was Better Proof Of The Bird's Existence Than The Bird Ever Was?

We Shouldn't Be Intimidated By Someone Else's Idea Of Perfection If It Will Prevent Us From Taking Steps We Actively Want To Take.

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.

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.

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

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

Only Now Do I Understand The War Against Boredom, The Lost Cause Of Empty Hours, Of Empty Days And Nights.

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

Telling The Truth

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

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

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

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

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