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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?

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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If We Are Not

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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?

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There Is An Overabundance Of Rational Reasons To Say No To Factory-farmed Meat: It Is The No. 1 Cause Of Global Warming, It Systematically Forces Tens Of Billions Of Animals To Suffer In Ways That Would Be Illegal If They Were Dogs, It Is A Decisive Factor In The Development Of Swine And Avian Flus, And So On.

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

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.

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

However Much We Obfuscate Or Ignore It, We Know That The Factory Farm Is Inhumane In The Deepest Sense Of The Word. And We Know That There Is Something That Matters In A Deep Way About The Lives We Create For The Living Beings Most Within Our Power. Our Response To The Factory Farm Is Ultimately A Test Of How We Respond To The Powerless, To The Most Distant, To The Voiceless--it Is A Test Of How We Act When No One Is Forcing Us To Act One Way Or Another.

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.

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.

Language Is Never Fully Trustworthy, But When It Comes To Eating Animals, Words Are As Often Used To Misdirect And Camouflage As They Are To Communicate. Some Words, Like Veal, Help Us Forget What We Are Actually Talking About. Some, Like Free-range, Can Mislead Those Whose Consciences Seek Clarification. Some, Like Happy, Mean The Opposite Of What They Would Seem. And Some, Like Natural, Mean Next To Nothing.

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.

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

Unimportant Things

Why Are You Leaving Me? He Wrote, I Do Not Know How To Live. I Do Not Know Either But I Am Trying. I Do Not Know How To Try. There Were Some Things I Wanted To Tell Him. But I Knew They Would Hurt Him. So I Buried Them And Let Them Hurt Me

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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.

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

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.

Few People Sufficiently Appreciate The Colossal Task Of Feeding A World Of Billions Of Omnivores Who Demand Meat With Their Potatoes.

...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.

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

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.

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

I 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.

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

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 Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

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.

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?

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

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

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

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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

Everything Is The Way It Is Because Everything Was The Way It Was

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

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

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

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

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

Only Humans Can Cry Tears.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Eskimos Have Four Hundred Words For Snow, And The Jewshave Four Hundred For Schmuck.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

...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.

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.

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.

If We Were To One Day Encounter A Form Of Life More Powerful And Intelligent Than Our Own, And It Regarded Us As We Regard Fish, What Would Be Our Argument Against Being Eaten?

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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 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

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

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.

Humans Are The Only Animals That Have Children On Purpose, Keep In Touch (or Don't), Care About Birthdays, Waste And Lose Time, Brush Their Teeth, Feel Nostalgia, Scrub Stains, Have Religions And Political Parties And Laws, Wear Keepsakes, Apologize Years After An Offense, Whisper, Fear Themselves, Interpret Dreams, Hide Their Genitalia, Shave, Bury Time Capsules, And Can Choose Not To Eat Something For Reasons Of Conscience. The Justifications For Eating Animals And For Not Eating Them Are Often Identical: We Are Not Them.

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

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

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

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.

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.

It Is Better To Lose Than Never To Have Had.

Writers Now Are Putting Total Faith In Designers At Apple And Amazon. It's Almost Like A Race-car Driver Having No Input Into How Cars Are Designed.

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.

My Point Is That There Are A Lot Of Forces, Like The Media And The General Political Rhetoric Tells Us We Should Have More. That We Should Do Better Than Our Parents And Have A Bigger House Or A Better Car.

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

The Torah Is The Foundational Text For Jewish Law, But The Haggadah Is Our Book Of Living Memory. We Are Not Merely Telling A Story Here. We Are Being Called To A Radical Act Of Empathy. Here We Are, Embarking On An Ancient, Perennial Attempt To Give Human Lives - Our Lives - Dignity.

We Need Enormous Pockets, Pockets Big Enough For Our Families And Our Friends, And Even The People Who Aren't On Our Lists, People We've Never Met But Still Want To Protect. We Need Pockets For Boroughs And For Cities, A Pocket That Could Hold The Universe.

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?

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

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

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

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

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

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.

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.

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

Literature Was The Only Religion Her Father Practiced, When A Book Fell On The Floor He Kissed It, When He Was Done With A Book He Tried To Give It Away To Someone Who Would Love It.

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.

Why Are Entire Flocks Of Industrial Birds Dying At Once? And What About The People Eating Those Birds? Just The Other Day, One Of The Local Pediatricians Was Telling Me He's Seeing All Kinds Of Illnesses That He Never Used To See. Not Only Juvenile Diabetes, But Inflammatory And Autoimmune Diseases That A Lot Of The Docs Don't Even Know What To Call. And Girls Are Going Through Puberty Much Earlier; And Kids Are Allergic To Just About Everything, And Asthma Is Out Of Control. Everyone Knows It's Our Foods... Kids Today Are The First Generation To Grow Up On This Stuff.

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

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.

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.

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.

Or Perhaps A Widow Found Him And Took Him In: Brought Him An Easy Chair, Changed His Sweater Every Morning, Shaved His Face Until The Hair Stopped Growing, Took Him Faithfully To Bed With Her Every Night, Whispered Sweet Nothings Into What Was Left Of His Ear, Laughed With Him Over Black Coffee, Cried With Him Over Yellowing Pictures, Talked Greenly About Having Kids Of Her Own, Began To Miss Him Before She Became Sick, Left Him Everything In Her Will, Thought Of Only Him As She Died, Always Knew He Was Fiction But Believed In Him Anyway.

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

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

What If I Never Stop Inventing?

And Yet And Yet - The Last Secret Of The Tree Of Codes Is That Nothing Can Ever Reach A Definite Conclusion. Nowhere As Much As There Do We Feel Possibilities Shaken By The Nearness Of Realization. The Atmosphere Becomes Possibilities And We Shall Wander And Make A Thousand Mistakes. We Shall Wander Along Yet Not Be Able To Understand.

She Wrote, I Wish I Could Be A Girl Again, With A Chance To Live My Life Again. I Have Suffered So Much More Than I Needed To. And The Joys I Have Felt Have Not Always Been Joyous. I Could Have Lived Differently.

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

I Asked Her, "are You An Optimist Or A Pessimist?" She Looked At Her Watch And Said, "i'm Optimistic." "then I Have Some Bad News For You, Because Humans Are Going To Destroy Each Others As Soon As It Becomes Easy Enough To, Which Will Be Very Soon." "why Do Beautiful Songs Make You Sad?" "because They Aren't True." "never?" "nothing Is Beautiful And True." She Smiled, But In A Way That Wasn't Just Happy, And Said, "you Sound Just Like Dad.

I Regret That It Takes A Life To Learn How To Live.

The Gift Is For You...the Surprise Is For Me.

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

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.

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

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

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

End Of The World

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.

Why I'm Not Where You Are ...

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

Memories Are Small Prayers To God, If We Believed In That Sort Of Thing.

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

What Does It Remember Like?

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.

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

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

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

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?

We Slept In The Same Bed. There Was Never A Right Time To Say It. It Was Always Unnecessary. The Books In My Father's Shed Were Sighing. The Sheets Were Rising And Falling Around Me With Anna's Breathing. I Thought About Waking Her. But It Was Unnecessary. There Would Be Other Nights. And How Can You Say I Love You To Someone You Love? I Rolled Onto My Side And Fell Asleep Next To Her. Here Is The Point Of Everything I Have Been Trying To Tell You... It's Always Necessary. I Love You.

I Wondered, For The First Time In My Life, If Life Was Worth All The Work It Took To Live. What Exactly Made It Worth It?

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

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.

Life Is Precious, So I Ought To Spend My Days, You Know, Making Sandwiches For Homeless People And Tending To The Elderly In Hospice Care. Life Is Precious, So I Should Give Everything Away, Except That I Live In The World. And In The World, I Actually Have Needs And Wants, And I Value My Needs And Wants. And I Live In The World, And I Can't Just Go Make Sandwiches Every Day Because I Also Have To Take Kids To School. I Also Have To, You Know, Write Books Because That's My Livelihood.

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

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.

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.

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

Love...is The Immovability Of Truth.

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.

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.

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

Just To Be A Functioning Adult In The World, We Develop All Of These Layers Of Protection. When We See Homeless People, We Don't Cry, Even Though Homeless People Probably Deserve Our Tears - You Know, It's A Horrible Thing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Anyway, The Fascinating Thing Was That I Read In National Geographic That There Are More People Alive Now Than Have Died In All Of Human History. In Other Words, If Everyone Wanted To Play Hamlet At Once, They Couldn’t, Because There Aren’t Enough Skulls!

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

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.

This Isn't Animal Experimentation, Where You An Imagine Some Proportionate Good At The Other End Of The Suffering. This Is What We Feel Like Eating. Tell Me Something: Why Is Taste, The Crudest Of Our Sense, Exempted From The Ethical Rules That Govern Our Other Sense? If You Stop And Think About It, It's Crazy. Why Doesn't A Horny Person Has As Strong A Claim To Raping An Animal As A Hungry One Does To Killing And Eating It?

I Know Lots And Lots And Lots Of Vegetarians Who Think It's Perfectly All Right To Kill Animals For Food To Eat, But Don't Do It Because They Think All The Ways In Which It's Done Are Wrong.

I Regret How Much I Believed In The Future.

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.

Is That Growing Old? Or Is It Something Worse?

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

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

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

Someone You Love

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

He Removed Several Pages Of Death Certificates, Which Were Picked Up By Another Breeze And Sent Into The Trees. Some Would Fall With The Leaves That September. Some Would Fall With The Trees Generations Later.

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.

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

Elsewhere The Paper Notes That Vegetarians And Vegans (including Athletes) 'meet And Exceed Requirements' For Protein. And, To Render The Whole We-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat Idea Even More Useless, Other Data Suggests That Excess Animal Protein Intake Is Linked With Osteoporosis, Kidney Disease, Calcium Stones In The Urinary Tract, And Some Cancers. Despite Some Persistent Confusion, It Is Clear That Vegetarians And Vegans Tend To Have More Optimal Protein Consumption Than Omnivores.

Sometimes You Have To Put Your Fears In Order.

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

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

It Was Not The Feeling Of Completeness I So Needed, But The Feeling Of Not Being Empty.

The Way That I Feel About My Jewish Identity Has Been Really Radically Changed By Events In Life. Like, Becoming A Writer Is One. Having Children Is Another. And Getting Older And Watching, You Know, My Parents And Grandparents Get Older Has Been Another, The Seasons Of - Being Witness To The Seasons Of Life And Wanting To Have Some Kind Of Infrastructure To Deal With It, To Cope With Them. Ritual Has Become More Important To Me As I've Gotten Older. It's Not Always Religious Ritual, But It Often Borrows From Judaism.

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

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

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

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

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

Second Thoughts

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

Everybody Knows The Competing Identities Of People Who Have Kids.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Have So Much To Say To You. I Want To Begin At The Beginning, Because That Is What You Deserve. I Want To Tell You Everything, Without Leaving Out A Single Detail. But Where Is The Beginning? And What Is Everything?

What You Deserve

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.

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

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?

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Alice Roosevelt Longworth

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