Background Image

...

It's So Beautiful At This Hour. The Sun Is Low, The Shadows Are Long, The Air Is Cold And Clean. You Won't Be Awake For Another Five Hours, But I Can't Help Feeling That We're Sharing This Clear And Beautiful Morning.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It's So Beautiful At

Jonathan Safran Foer

...

It's So Beautiful At This Hour. The Sun Is Low, The Shadows Are Long, The Air Is Cold And Clean. You Won't Be Awake For Another Five Hours, But I Can't Help Feeling That We're Sharing This Clear And Beautiful Morning.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Jonathan Safran Foer

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.

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

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

We Spent Our Lives Making Livings.

Making A Living

August Has Passed, And Yet Summer Continues By Force To Grow Days. They Sprout Secretly Between The Chapters Of The Year, Covertly Included Between Its Pages.

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.

We Say No To Lots Of Things That Would Please Us. I Would Like To Punch People Every Now And Then, But I Don't. I Would Like To Have Something For Free Rather Than Pay For It. I Would Like To Skip To The Front Of The Line... I Don't Mean To Brush Aside The Taste Of Meat, Which Is A Powerful Attraction. But Its Power Is Not Without Limit.

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

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?

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

As Long As I Am Thinking, I Am Alive.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

What? She Said Once To Herself, And Then Once Aloud, What? She Felt A Total Displacement, Like A Spinning Globe Brought To A Sudden Halt By The Light Touch Of A Finger. How Did She End Up Here, Like This? How Could There Have Been So Much - So Many Moments, So Many People And Things, So Many Razors And Pillows, Timepieces And Subtle Coffins - Without Her Being Aware? How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her?

We Eat As Sons And Daughters, As Families, As Communities, As Generations, As Nations, And Increasingly As A Globe. We Can't Stop Our Eating From Radiating Influence Even If We Want To.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

When I Heard Your Organization Was Recording Testimonies, I Knew I Had To Come. She Died In My Arms, Saying 'i Don't Want To Die.' That Is What Death Is Like. It Doesn't Matter What Uniforms The Soldiers Are Wearing. It Doesn't Matter How Good The Weapons Are. I Thought If Everyone Could See What I Saw, We Would Never Have War Anymore.

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.

Farmers Since The Beginning Of Time Have Been Feeding The World Very Successfully Without Systematically Abusing Animals Or Destroying The Environment. But We're Breeding Food That Is Less Safe For Us, It Tastes Much Worse Than It Ever Has In History, And It's Wreaking Havoc On The Environment In A Way That It Never Did In History Before. All In The Interest Of It Being Cheap.

Am I Such A Bad Person For Dreaming Of A World That Ends When I Do? I Don't Mean The World Ending With Respect To Me, But Every Set Of Eyes Closing With Mine.

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

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?

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

I Imagine A Line, A White Line, Painted On The Sand And On The Ocean, From Me To You.

Long Distance Relationship

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.

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

We've Made Science Experiments Of Ourselves And Our Children.

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

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

Mom Said, "his Spirit Is There," And That Made Me Really Angry. I Told Her, "dad Didn't Have A Spirit! He Had Cells!" "his Memory Is There." "his Memory Is Here," I Said, Pointing At My Head. "dad Had A Spirit," She Said, Like She Was Rewinding A Bit In Our Conversation. I Told Her, "he Had Cells, And Now They're On Rooftops, And In The River, And In The Lungs Of Millions Of People Around New York, Who Breathe Him Every Time They Speak!

...and When Is Enough Proof Enough?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Food Serves Two Parallel Purposes: It Nourishes And It Helps You Remember. Eating And Storytelling Are Inseparable-the Saltwater Is Also Tears; The Honey Not Only Tastes Sweet, But Makes Us Think Of Sweetness; The Matzo Is The Bread Of Our Affliction.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

Animal Experimentation

My Greatest Fear Is Feeling Like A Professional Novelist. Somebody Who Creates Characters, Who Sits Down And Has Pieces Of Paper Taped To The Wall - What's Going To Happen In This Scene, Or This Act. What I Like Is For It To Be A Much More Scary, Sloppy Reflection Of Who I Am.

I Felt, That Night, On That Stage, Under That Skull, Incredibly Close To Everything In The Universe, But Also Extremely Alone. 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? What's So Horrible About Being Dead Forever, And Not Feeling Anything, And Not Even Dreaming? What's So Great About Feeling And Dreaming?

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

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

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

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

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

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 Tried So Hard. We Were Always Trying To Help Each Other. But Not Because We Were Helpless. He Needed To Get Things For Me, Just As I Needed To Get Things For Him. It Gave Us Purpose. Sometimes I Would Ask Him For Something That I Did Not Even Want, Just To Let Him Get It For Me. We Spent Our Days Trying To Help Each Other Help Each Other. I Would Get His Slippers. He Would Make My Tea. I Would Turn Up The Heat So He Could Turn Up The Air Conditioner So I Could Turn Up The Heat.

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

I Was More Alone Than If I Had Been Alone.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Only Someone Who'd Never Been An Animal Would Put Up A Sign Saying Not To Feed Them.

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

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

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

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

Life Is Scarier Than Death.

Memory Was Supposed To Fill The Time, But It Made Time A Hole To Be Filled. Each Second Was Two Hundred Yards, To Be Walked, Crawled. You Couldn't See The Next Hour, It Was So Far In The Distance. Tomorrow Was Over The Horizon, And Would Take An Entire Day To Reach.

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.

Dear Anna, We Will Live In A Home With No Walls, So That Everywhere We Go Will Be Our Home.

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

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

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

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.

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

Someone You Love

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

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

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.

The More Exposure People Have To The Realities Of Factory Farming, The More We Will See People Rejecting It. It's Already Happening.

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.

Grandfather Informs Me That Is Not Possible.

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

Imagine Being Served A Plate Of Sushi. But This Plate Also Holds All Of The Animals That Were Killed For Your Serving Of Sushi. The Plate Might Have To Be Five Feet Across.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Were Quiet On The Car Ride Home. I Turned On The Radio And Found A Station Playing "hey Jude." It Was True, I Didn't Want To Make It Bad. I Wanted To Take The Sad Song And Make It Better. It's Just That I Didn't Know How.

Humans Are The Only Animal That Blushes, Laughs, Has Religion, Wages War, And Kisses With Lips. So In A Way, The More You Kiss With Lips, The More Human You Are. And The More You Wage War.

Compassion Is A Muscle That Gets Stronger With Use, And The Regular Exercise Of Choosing Kindness Over Cruelty Would Change Us.

I Felt Shame For Living In A Nation Of Unprecedented Prosperity-a Nation That Spends A Smaller Percentage Of Income On Food Than Any Other Civilization Has In Human History-but In The Name Of Affordability Treats The Animals It Eats With Cruelty So Extreme It Would Be Illegal If Inflicted On A Dog.

Art Art Is That Thing Having To Do Only With Itself—the Product Of A Successful Attempt To Make A Work Of Art. Unfortunately, There Are No Expamples Of Art, Nor Good Reasons To Think That It Will Ever Exist. (everything That Has Been Made Has Been Made With A Purpose, Teverything With An End Exists Outside Of That Thing, I.e., "i Want To Sell This", Or "i Want This To Make Me Famous And Loved", Or "i Want This To Make Me Whole", Or Worse, "i Want This To Make Others Whole.") And Yet We Continue To Write, Paint, Sculpt And Compose. Is This Foolish Of Us?

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.

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

Everything Is Illuminated

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

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

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.

If People Thought About Food More Like How We Think About The Environment, A Lot Of People Would Be Eating Differently And The Whole System Would Look A Lot Different.

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

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

(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.)

If We Communicated With Something Like Music, We Would Never Be Misunderstood, Because There Is Nothing In Music To Understand...... But Until We Find This New Way Of Speaking, Until We Can Find A Nonapproximate Vocabulary, Nonsense Words Are The Best Thing We've Got. Ifactifice Is One Such Word.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

I'd Lost Count Of The Disappointments.

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

Most Of The Times That I Think About My Relationship To Judaism, I Not Only Accuse Myself Of A Shallowness, But I Feel Certain That There's A Shallowness There. That's Not A Bad Thing, Really.

It Was Inevitable: Yankel Fell In Love With His Never-wife. He Would Wake From Sleep To Miss The Weight That Never Depressed The Bed Next To Him, Remember In Earnest The Weight Of Gestures She Never Made, Long For The Un-weight Of Her Un-arm Slung Over His Too-real Chest, Making His Widower's Rememberences That Much More Convincing And His Pain That Much More Real.

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

Telling The Truth

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.

I Am Always Sad, I Think. Perhaps This Signifies That I Am Not Sad At All, Because Sadness Is Something Lower Than Your Normal Disposition, And I Am Always The Same Thing. Perhaps I Am The Only Person In The World, Then, Who Never Becomes Sad. Perhaps I Am Lucky.

We Are Being Very Nomadic With The Truth, Yes?

There's A Really Wonderful Book Called "man Is Not Alone" By Abraham Joshua Heschel, Which Makes The Case That Everybody Is Religious. You Know, We've Just Been Sort Of Too Vigilant About Our Terminology And Our Definitions And Too Precious About It. But There's Nobody Who Is Indifferent To The Experience Of Standing In Front Of An Ocean At Night. There's Nobody Who Is Indifferent To The Feeling Of, You Know, Lying On Your Back And Looking Up At The Night Sky.

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.

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

I Started Inventing Things, And Then I Couldn't Stop, Like Beavers, Which I Know About. People Think They Cut Down Trees So They Can Build Dams, But In Reality It's Because Their Teeth Never Stop Growing, And If They Didn't Constantly File Them Down By Cutting Through All Of Those Trees, Their Teeth Would Start To Grow Into Their Own Faces, Which Would Kill Them. That's How My Brain Was.

Each Day Has Been Chained To The Previous One. But The Weeks Have Wings. Anyone Who Believes That A Second Is Faster Than A Decade Did Not Live My Life.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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

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

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?

I Am Willing To Be Annoying If That's What Was Necessary.

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

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

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.

I Can't Count The Times That Upon Telling Someone I Am Vegetarian, He Or She Responded By Pointing Out An Inconsistency In My Lifestyle Or Trying To Find A Flaw In An Argument I Never Made. (i Have Often Felt That My Vegetarianism Matters More To Such People Than It Does To Me.)

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

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

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.

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.

And Nothing Inspires As Much Shame As Being A Parent. Children Confront Us With Our Paradoxes And Hypocrisies, And We Are Exposed. You Need To Find An Answer For Every Why — Why Do We Do This? Why Don’t We Do That? — And Often There Isn’t A Good One. So You Say, Simply, Because. Or You Tell A Story That You Know Isn’t True. And Whether Or Not Your Face Reddens, You Blush. The Shame Of Parenthood — Which Is A Good Shame — Is That We Want Our Children To Be More Whole Than We Are, To Have Satisfactory Answers.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Could Tell That Mom Was Dreaming, But I Didn't Want To Know What She Was Dreaming About, Because I Had Enough Of My Own Nightmares, And If She Had Been Dreaming Something Happy, I Would Have Been Angry At Her For Dreaming Something Happy.

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

Unimportant Things

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I Looked At You, My Life Made Sense. Even The Bad Things Made Sense. They Were Necessary To Make You Possible.

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.

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

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.

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

Fiction Works When It Makes A Reader Feel Something Strongly.

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

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 Write Because I Want To End My Loneliness. Books Make People Less Alone. That, Before And After Everything Else, Is What Books Do. They Show Us That Conversations Are Possible Across Distances.

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

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

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

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?

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

I've Never Particularly Liked Bankers.

Food Is Not Rational. Food Is Culture, Habit, And Identity.

Years Were Passing Through The Spaces Between Moments.

We Aren’t Exactly Emptying The Oceans; It’s More Like Clear-cutting A Forest With Thousands Of Species To Create Massive Fields With One Type Of Soybean.

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

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.

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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

Trending Author

James G. Frazer

Category