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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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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I'm Less Worried About

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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.

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I Shook My Tambourine The Whole Time, Because It Helped Me Remember That Even Though I Was Going Through Different Neighborhoods, I Was Still Me.

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

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.

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

Do You Eat Chicken Because You Are Familiar With The Scientific Literature On Them And Have Decided That Their Suffering Doesn't Matter, Or Do You Do It Because It Tastes Good?

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

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

Look, Taste Is Clearly The Crudest Of Our Senses: This Is Scientifically, Objectively Factual. It Is Less Nuanced. Eyesight Is Extraordinary - Hearing, Touch. I Find People Who Devote Their Whole Lives To Taste A Little Strange.

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

She Was Not Crying Which Surprised Me Very Much But I Understand Now That She Had Found Places For Her Melancholy That Were Behind More Masks Than Only Her Eyes

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.

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.

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?

Just How Destructive Does A Culinary Preference Have To Be Before We Decide To Eat Something Else? If Contributing To The Suffering Of Billions Of Animals That Live Miserable Lives And (quite Often) Die In Horrific Ways Isn't Motivating, What Would Be? If Being The Number One Contributor To The Most Serious Threat Facing The Planet (global Warming) Isn't Enough, What Is? And If You Are Tempted To Put Off These Questions Of Conscience, To Say Not Now, Then When?

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

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

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.

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

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

Second Thoughts

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

This Brings Me Back To The Image Of Kafka Standing Before A Fish In The Berlin Aquarium, A Fish On Which His Gaze Fell In A Newly Found Peace After He Decided Not To Eat Animals. Kafka Recognized That Fish As A Member Of His Invisible Family- Not As His Equal, Of Course, But As Another Being That Was His Concern.

Dogs Are Wonderful, And In Many Ways Unique. But They Are Remarkably Unremarkable In Their Intellectual And Experiential Capacities. Pigs Are Every Bit As Intelligent And Feeling, By Any Sensible Definition Of The Words. They Can't Hop Into The Back Of A Volvo, But They Can Fetch, Run And Play, Be Mischievous, And Reciprocate Affection. So Why Don't They Get To Curl Up By The Fire? Why Can't They At Least Be Spared Being Tossed On The Fire?

Everyone Performs Bad Actions... A Bad Person Is Someone Who Does Not Lament His Bad Actions.

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

I Wanted To Touch Him, To Tell Him That Even If Everyone Left Everyone, I Would Never Leave Him, He Talked And Talked, His Words Fell Through Him, Trying To Find The Floor To His Sadness.

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.

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

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

It Was Getting Hard To Keep All The Things I Didn't Know Inside Me.

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.

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

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

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

You Are The Only One Who Has Understood Even A Whisper Of Me, And I Will Tell You That I Am The Only Person Who Has Understood Even A Whisper Of You.

We Were Trying To Make Our Lives Easier, Trying, With All Our Rules, To Make Life Effortless. But A Friction Began To Arise Between Nothing And Something, In The Morning The Nothing Vase Cast A Something Shadow, Like The Memory Of Someone You've Lost, What Can You Say About That, At Night The Nothing Light Spilled From The Guest Room Spilled Under The Nothing Door And Stained The Something Hallway, There's Nothing To Say.

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

Sometimes One Simply Wants To Disappear.

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.

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.

Only Humans Can Cry Tears.

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.

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

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

She Wanted Nothing More Than Someone To Miss, To Touch, With Whom To Speak Like A Child, With Whom To Be A Child.

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

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.

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.

We Need A Better Way To Talk About Eating Animals. We Need A Way That Brings Meat To The Center Of Public Discussion In The Same Way It Is Often At The Center Of Our Plates. This Doesn't Require That We Pretend We Are Going To Have A Collective Agreement. However Strong Our Intuitions Are About What's Right For Us Personally And Even About What's Right For Others, We All Know In Advance That Our Positions Will Clash With Those Of Our Neighbors. What Do We Do With That Most Inevitable Reality? Drop The Conversation, Or Find A Way To Reframe It?

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

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.

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

...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.

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.

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.

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 Question, I've Come To Think, Is Not What Inspires One To Change, But What Inspires One To Remain Changed.

I Missed You Even When I Was With You. That’s Been My Problem. I Miss What I Already Have, And I Surround Myself With Things That Are Missing.

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.

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

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.

As Long As I Am Thinking, I Am Alive.

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.

Yesterday I Wanted To Turn Inside Out.

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.

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.

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.

[…] 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.

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

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.

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

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 See Myself As Someone Who Makes Things. Definitions Have Never Done Anything But Constrain.

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.

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.

[s]o If The Device Of The Person In The Ambulance Detected The Device Of The Person He Loved The Most, Or The Person Who Loved Him The Most, And The Person In The Ambulance Was Really Badly Hurt, And Might Even Die, The Ambulance Could Flash Goodbye! I Love You! Goodbye! I Love You!

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

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

I Went To The Guest Room And Pretended To Write. I Hit The Space Bar Again And Again And Again. My Life Story Was Spaces.

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other.

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.

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.

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

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

No Matter How Much I Feel, I’m Not Going To Let It Out. If I Have To Cry, I’m Gonna Cry On The Inside. If I Have To Bleed, I’ll Bruise. If My Heart Starts Going Crazy, I’m Not Gonna Tell Everyone In The World About It. It Doesn’t Help Anything. It Just Makes Everyone’s Life Worse.

I Never Confused What I Had With What I Was.

What The Meat Industry Figured Out Is That You Don't Need Healthy Animals To Make A Profit. Sick Animals Are More Profitable... Factory Farms Calculate How Close To Death They Can Keep Animals Without Killing Them. That's The Business Model. How Quickly They Can Be Made To Grow, How Tightly They Can Be Packed, How Much Or How Little Can They Eat, How Sick They Can Get Without Dying...we Live In A World In Which It's Conventional To Treat An Animal Like A Block Of Wood.

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

Everything Is To Protect You. I Exist In Case You Need To Be Protected.

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

He Promised Us That Everything Would Be Okay. I Was A Child, But I Knew That Everything Would Not Be Okay. That Did Not Make My Father A Liar. It Made Him My Father.

We Often Use Technology To Save Time, But Increasingly, It Either Takes The Saved Time Along With It, Or Makes The Saved Time Less Present, Intimate And Rich. I Worry That The Closer The World Gets To Our Fingertips, The Further It Gets From Our Hearts.

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

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

Everything Is Illuminated

Songs Are As Sad As The Listener.

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

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.

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 Do Think Ordinariness Is, In A Way, The Enemy, But Not Ordinariness As The Opposite Of Flamboyance.

Let Love Write On You For Awhile.

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.

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

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

I First Became A Vegetarian When I Was Nine, In Response To An Argument Made By A Radical Babysitter. My Great Change - Which Lasted A Couple Of Weeks - Was Based On The Very Simple Instinct That It's Wrong To Kill Animals For Food.

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.

She Was With Me. She Did All Of Those Things And So Many More, Things I Would Never Tell Anyone, And She Never Even Loved Me. Now That’s Love.

Everything Is Illuminated

Grandfather Kicked The Stop Pedal, And My Face Gave A High-five To The Front Window.

I Wouldn't Want A Boy To Think I Was Pretty Unless He Was The Kind Of Boy Who Thought I Was Pretty.

...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.

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

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

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

I Watched The Sheets Breathe When She Breathed, Like How Dad Used To Say That Trees Inhale When People Exhale, Because I Was Too Young To Understand The Truth About Biological Processes.

Art Can Be Very Political But That Can't Be The Purpose Of Art, It Can't Be The Driving Force. It Isn't With Any Of The Books That I Love, Anyway.

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

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.

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

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.

She Was So Beautiful, Like Someone Who You Will Never Meet, But Always Dream Of Meeting, Like Someone Who Is Too Good For You.

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

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.

There's Nothing Good About Being Certain About Things. And I Don't Think There's Any Real Talent In Using Language In A Manipulative Way, With Phrases Like "tax Relief" Or "social Security Reform." It's Politically Clever, But It's Also Completely Disingenuous, And It's Not Something To Aspire To.

You Have To Do Something Bad To Do Something Good.

I Woke Up Once In The Middle Of The Night, And Buckminster's Paws Were On My Eyelids. He Must Have Been Feeling My Nightmares.

I Regret How Much I Believed In The Future.

It Would Be Refreshing To Have A Politician Try To Defend Guns Without Any Reference To The Second Amendment, But On The Merits Of Guns.

Second Amendment

As I've Grown Older, I've Grown More Convinced There's Nothing That Shouldn't Be Talked About. If We Think We're Protecting Each Other, We're Not.

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.

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

But I Knew The Truth And That's Why I Was So Sad. Every Moment Before This One Depends On This One. Everything In The History Of The World Can Be Proven Wrong In One Moment.

I 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.

Or Maybe What He Fears Is Just The Opposite: That Nobody Is Looking; That His Death, Like His Life, Is Without Purpose; That There Is Neither Greater Good Nor Evil--only People Living And Dying Because Their Bodies Function And Then Do Not; That The Universe Is A Rip.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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?

He Couldn't Bear To Live, But He Couldn't Bear To Die. He Couldn't Bear The Thought Of He Making Love To Someone Else, But Neither Could He Bear The Absence Of The Thought. And As For The Note, He Couldn't Bear To Keep It, But He Couldn't Bear To Destroy It Either.

...people With Nothing To Declare Carry The Most.

Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

This Is Love, She Thought, Isn't It? When You Notice Someone's Absence And Hate That Absence More Than Anything? More, Even, Than You Love His Presence?

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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

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

...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.

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.

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?

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.

Then I Have Some Bad News For You, Because Humans Are Going To Destroy Each Other As Soon As It Becomes Easy Enough To, Which Will Be Very Soon.

If Nothing Matters, There's Nothing To Save.

Nothing Matters

If I’d Been Someone Else In A Different World I’d've Done Something Different, But I Was Myself And The World Was The World, So I Was Silent.

Needless To Say, Jamming Deformed, Drugged, Overstressed Birds Together In A Filthy, Waste-coated Room Is Not Very Healthy. Beyond Deformities, Eye Damage, Blindness, Bacterial Infections Of Bones, Slipped Vertebrae, Paralysis, Internal Bleeding, Anemia, Slipped Tendons, Twisted Lower Legs And Necks, Respiratory Diseases, And Weakened Immune Systems Are Frequent And Long-standing Problems On Factory Farms.

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

Oskar Schell: If The Sun Were To Explode, You Wouldn't Even Know About It For 8 Minutes Because Thats How Long It Takes For Light To Travel To Us. For Eight Minutes The World Would Still Be Bright And It Would Still Feel Warm. It Was A Year Since My Dad Died And I Could Feel My Eight Minutes With Him... Were Running Out.

Instead Of Singing In The Shower, I Would Write Out The Lyrics Of My Favourite Songs, The Ink Would Turn The Water Blue Or Red Or Green, And The Music Would Run Down My Legs.

I Often Think About How My Sons Will Come To Know About September 11th. Something Overheard? A Newspaper Image? In School? I Would Prefer That They Learn About It From My Wife And Me, In A Deliberate And Safe Way. But It's Hard To Imagine Ever Feeling Ready To Broach The Subject Without Some Impetus.

She Was Like A Drowning Person, Flailing, Reaching For Anything That Might Save Her. Her Life Was An Urgent, Desperate Struggle To Justify Her Life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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?

As For The Bracelet Mom Wore To The Funeral, What I Did Was I Converted Dad’s Last Voice Message Into Morse Code, And I Used Sky-blue Beads For Silence, Maroon Beads For Breaks Between Letters, Violet Beads For Breaks Between Words, And Long And Short Pieces Of String Between The Beads For Long And Short Beeps, Which Are Actually Called Blips, I Think, Or Something. Dad Would Have Known.

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.

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 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?

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

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 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.

Darling, You Asked Me To Write You A Letter, So I Am Writing You A Letter. I Do Not Know Why I Am Writing You This Letter, Or What This Letter Is Supposed To Be About, But I Am Writing It Nonetheless, Because I Love You Very Much And Trust That You Have Some Good Purpose For Having Me Write This Letter. I Hope That One Day You Will Have The Experience Of Doing Something You Do Not Understand For Someone You Love. Your Father

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.

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

Can’t You Even Tell Me If I’m On The Right Track?" Buckminster Purred, And Dad Shrugged His Shoulders Again. "but If You Don’t Tell Me Anything, How Can I Ever Be Right?" He Circled Something In An Article And Said, "another Way Of Looking At It Would Be, How Could You Ever Be Wrong?

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

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

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

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone.

Marriage Is Like A Chess Match Is Initiated And The Board Expands Over Time Until It Takes Up All Of A Life.

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

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

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

Sometimes You Have To Put Your Fears In Order.

We Know It (meat Eating) Is Indisputably The Number One Cause Of Global Warming. So What Does It Mean Exactly To Be An Environmentalist On A Daily Basis If You Are Not Thinking About The Number One Cause Of Global Warming Or One Of The Top Two Or Three Causes Of All Other Environmental Problems? Does It Mean You Are Necessarily Someone Who Doesn't Care About The Environment? Obviously Not, But It Might Mean You Have A Blind Spot For Something Big.

We Can't Plead Ignorance, Only Indifference. Those Alive Today Are The Generations That Came To Know Better. We Have The Burden And The Opportunity Of Living In The Moment When The Critique Of Factory Farming Broke Into The Popular Consciousness. We Are The Ones Of Whom It Will Be Fairly Asked, What Did You Do When You Learned The Truth About Eating Animals?

And I Wouldn't Say No To Something Sweet.

Something Sweet

Grandfather Informs Me That Is Not Possible.

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Mike Fitzpatrick

Brian Austin Green

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