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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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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It Will Never Be

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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.

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

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I Wanted To Tell Her Everything, Maybe If I'd Been Able To, We Could Have Lived Differently, Maybe I'd Be There With You Now Instead Of Here. Maybe... If I'd Said, 'i'm So Afraid Of Losing Something I Love That I Refuse To Love Anything,' Maybe That Would Have Made The Impossible Possible. Maybe, But I Couldn't Do It, I Had Buried Too Much Too Deeply Inside Me. And Here I Am, Instead Of There.

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

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

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I Can Forgive You For Leaving, But Not For Coming Back.

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

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Grandfather Informs Me That Is Not Possible.

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We Looked At Each Other Until It Felt Like Everything Would Burst Into Flames

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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.

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

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

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I Felt, That Night, On That Stage, Under That Skull, Incredibly Close To Everything In The Universe, But Also Extremely Alone.

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Factory Farming, Of Course, Does Not Cause All The World's Problems, But Is Is Remarkable Just How Many Of Them Intersect There.

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.

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 Did Not Need To Know If He Could Love Me. I Needed To Know If He Could Need Me.

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

One Of The Greatest Opportunities To Live Our Values-or Betray Them-lies In The Food We Put On Our Plates.

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

Someone You Love

We Are Being Very Nomadic With The Truth, Yes?

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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

Unimportant Things

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

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

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.

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.

Her Life Was A Slow Realization That The World Was Not For Her And That For Whatever Reason She Would Never Be Happy And Honest At The Same Time. She Felt As If She Were Brimming Always Producing And Hoarding More Love Inside Her. But There Was No Release. Table Ivory Elephant Charm Rainbow Onion Hairdo Violence Melodrama Honey...none Of It Moved Her. She Addressed The World Honestly Searching For Something Deserving Of The Volumes Of Love She Knew She Had Within Her But To Each She Would Have To Say I Don't Love You.

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

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.

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

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

You Can See The Most Beautiful Things From The Observation Deck Of The Empire State Building. I Read Somewhere That People On The Street Are Supposed To Look Like Ants, But That's Not True. They Look Like Little People. And The Cars Look Like Little Cars. And Even The Buildings Look Little. It's Like New York Is A Miniature Replica Of New York, Which Is Nice, Because You Can See What It's Really Like, Instead Of How It Feels When You're In The Middle Of It.

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

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.

Time Was Passing Like A Hand Waving From A Train I Wanted To Be On. I Hope You Never Have To Think About Anything As Much As I Think About You.

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

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.

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.

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

Long Distance Relationship

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

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.

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

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

As A Writer, Putting Words On The Page Is How I Pay Attention.

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.

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

They Reciprocated The Great And Saving Lie--that Our Love For Things Is Greater Than Our Lover For Our Love For Things--willfully Playing The Parts They Wrote For Themselves, Willfully Creating And Believing Fictions Necessary For Life.

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.

Fiction Works When It Makes A Reader Feel Something Strongly.

Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

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

I Asked My Schoolmate Mary To Write A Letter To Me. She Was Funny And Full Of Life. She Liked To Run Around Her Empty House Without Any Clothes On, Even Once She Was Too Old For That. Nothing Embarrassed Her. I Admired That So Much, Because Everything Embarrassed Me, And That Hurt Me. She Loved To Jump On Her Bed. She Jumped On Her Bed For So Many Years That One Afternoon, While I Watched Her Jump, The Seams Burst. Feathers Filled The Small Room. Our Laughter Kept The Feathers In The Air. I Thought About Birds. Could They Fly If There Wasn’t Someone, Somewhere, Laughing?

The 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.

Because It Was Starting To Get Dark, And Because The Streets Were Crowded, I Bumped Into A Googolplex People. Who Were They? Where Were They Going? What Were They Looking For? I Wanted To Hear Their Heartbeats, And I Wanted Them To Hear Mine.

A Few Weeks After The Worst Day, I Started Writing Lots Of Letters. I Don't Know Why, But It Was One Of The Only Things That Made My Boots Lighter.

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

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

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.

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

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

Cobblestone Streets

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

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.

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.

In The Past Seven Years Of Love-making He Had Heard The Words "i Love You" So Many Times: From The Mouths Of Widows And Children, From Prostitutes, Family Friends, Travelers, And Adulterous Wives. Women Said "i Love You" Without His Ever Speaking. "the More You Love Someone," He Came To Think, "the Harder It Is To Tell Them." It Surprised Him That Strangers Didn't Stop Each Other On The Street To Say "i Love You".

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

Profound, Bottomless Self-doubt - It Has No Value - What's The Point? In A Way, It Takes Up As Much Time As Anything Else.

Every Night Before Putting Her To Sleep, Yankel Counts Her Ribs, As If One Might Have Disappeared In The Course Of The Day And Become The Seed And Soil For Some New Companion To Steal Her Away From Him.

... The Man Took My Passport And Asked Me The Purpose Of My Visit, I Wrote In My Daybook, 'to Mourn,' And Then, 'to Try To Live,' He Gave Me A Look And Asked If I Would Consider That Business Or Pleasure, I Wrote, 'neither.' 'for How Long Do You Plan To Mourn And Try To Live?' I Wrote, 'for The Rest Of My Life.

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

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

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

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

Feeding My Children Is Not Like Feeding Myself: It Matters More.

Is That Growing Old? Or Is It Something Worse?

Why Do Beautiful Songs Make You Sad?' 'because They Aren't True.' 'never?' '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.

Ninety-nine Percent Of All Land Animals Eaten Or Used To Produce Milk And Eggs In The United States Are Factory Farmed. So Although There Are Important Exceptions, To Speak About Eating Animals Today Is To Speak About Factory Farming.

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.

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

Just About Every Children's Book In My Local Bookstore Has An Animal For Its Hero. But Then, Only A Few Feet Away In The Cookbook Section, Just About Every Cookbook Includes Recipes For Cooking Animals. Is There A More Illuminating Illustration Of Our Paradoxical Relationship With The Nonhuman World?

Isn't It So Weird How The Number Of Dead People Is Increasing Even Though The Earth Stays The Same Size, So That One Day There Isn't Going To Be Room To Bury Anyone Anymore?

I Didn't Intend To Write About Totems Or People Searching. I Tried Not To Constrain Myself, And This Is What I Ended Up With. There's This Great Auden Quote: "i Look At What I Write So I Can See What I Think."

Everybody Knows The Competing Identities Of People Who Have Kids.

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.

Do You Have Any Coffee?'...'it Stunts My Growth, And I'm Afraid Of Death.

Afraid Of Death

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

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