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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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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Or Perhaps A Widow

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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.

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The Un Special Envoy On Food Called It A 'crime Against Humanity' To Funnel 100 Million Tons Of Grain And Corn To Ethanol When Almost A Billion People Are Starving. So What Kind Of Crime Is Animal Agriculture, Which Uses 756 Million Tons Of Grain And Corn Per Year, Much More Than Enough To Adequately Feed The 1.4 Billion Human Who Are Living In Dire Poverty?

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

The American Dream Itself Is Declining.

I Hope You Never Think About Anything As Much As I Think About You.

If Nothing Matters, There's Nothing To Save.

Nothing Matters

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.

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.

Everyone Is Always In Need Of Something That Another Person Can Give, Be It Undivided Attention, A Kind Word Or Deep Empathy. There Is No Better Use Of A Life Than To Be Attentive To Such Needs.

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.

Stories About Food Are Stories About Us-our History And Our Values.

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

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

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.

She Brushed Her Eyelashes Against His Chest.

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.

Everybody Knows The Competing Identities Of People Who Have Kids.

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.

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

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

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.

...there Are Only Some Many Times You Can Utter "it Does Not Hurt" Before It Begins To Hurt Even More Than The Hurt.

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.

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.

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

My Impression Is That Staying Together As A Couple Does Not Correspond To The Challenges Themselves, But Whether The Very Idea Of Breaking Up Is An Option On The Table. If It Is, Then Some People Take It. If It's Not, Then They Will Keep Working At It. You Must Know People Who Were Terribly Suited Who Make It Work. And There Are Couples Who Seem Perfectly Suited That Break Up. It's A Mystery To Everyone.

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.

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

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

What About Little Microphones? What If Everyone Swallowed Them, And They Played The Sounds Of Our Hearts Through A Little Speaker. [...] I Wonder If Everyone's Hearts Would Start To Beat At The Same Time.

You Can Make Great Meals Without Meat That Are, Of Course, Much More Healthy For The Same Price, But It Takes A Process Of Reeducation, Just Because Americans Aren't Familiar With How To Cook Vegetables Anymore.

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

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

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.

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.

...he Enclosed Pieces Of String That He Used To Measure Out His Body--his Head, Thigh, Forearm, Finger, Neck, Everything. He Wanted Me To Sleep With Them Under My Pillow. He Said That When He Came Back, We Would Remeasure His Body Against The String As Proof That He Hadn't Changed.

If The Thrill Of Hunting Were In The Hunt, Or Even In The Marksmanship, A Camera Would Do Just As Well.

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

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

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

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

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Factory Farmers Talk About Their Desire To Feed The World. That's Not What They're Doing. They're Feeding The World With Really, Really Cheap Stuff.

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."

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

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.

I Usually Write Away From Home, In Coffee Shops, On Trains, On Planes, In Friends’ Houses. I Like Places Where There’s Stuff Going On That You Can Lift Your Eyes, See Something Interesting, Overhear A Conversation.

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

Getting To Know Each Other

She Was A Genius Of Sadness, Immersing Herself In It, Separating Its Numerous Strands, Appreciating Its Subtle Nuances. She Was A Prism Through Which Sadness Could Be Divided Into Its Infinite Spectrum.

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 Dreamt Four Nights Ago Of Clock Hands Descending From The Universe Like Rain, Of The Moon As A Green Eye, Of Mirrors And Insects, Of A Love That Never Withdrew. It Was Not The Feeling Of Completeness That I So Needed, But The Feeling Of Not Being Empty.

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?

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I Am Sure People Tell You This Constantly But If You Looked Up 'incredibly Beautiful' In The Dictionary There Would Be A Picture Of You.

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

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.

Mom Told Me, “it Probably Gets Pretty Lonely To Be Grandma, Don’t You Think?” I Told Her, “it Probably Gets Pretty Lonely To Be Anyone

A Map Such As That One Is Worth Many Hundreds, And As Luck Will Have It, Thousands Of Dollars. But More Than This, It Is A Remembrance Of That Time Before Our Planet Was So Small. When This Map Was Made, I Thought, You Could Live Without Knowing Where You Were Not Living.

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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

There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

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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.

Fiction Works When It Makes A Reader Feel Something Strongly.

Every Parent Who Loses A Child Finds A Way To Laugh Again. The Timbre Begins To Fade. The Edge Dulls. The Hurt Lessens. Every Love Is Carved From Loss. Mine Was. Yours Is. Your Great-great-great-children's Will Be. But We Learn To Live With That Love.

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

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

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

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

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

She Had Fallen In Love So Many Times That She Began To Suspect She Was Not Falling In Love At All, But Doing Something Much More Ordinary.

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She Repeats Things Until They Are True, Or Until She Can't Tell Whether They Are True Or Not. She Has Become An Expert At Confusing What Is With What Was With What Should Be With What Could Be.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Do You Think I'm Wonderful? She Asked Him One Day As They Leaned Against The Trunk Of A Petrified Maple. No, He Said. Why? Because So Many Girls Are Wonderful. I Imagine Hundreds Of Men Have Called Their Loves Wonderful Today, And It's Only Noon. You Couldn't Be Something That Hundreds Of Others Are.

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.

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.

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

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

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

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

I Need An Office, So I Can Have A Place Where I Don't Write.

It Made Me Start To Wonder If There Were Other People So Lonely So Close. I Thought About “eleanor Rigby.” It’s True, Where Do They All Come From? And Where Do They All Belong?

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

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

I Didn't Feel Empty. I Wished I'd Felt Empty. ... I Wanted To Be Empty Like An Overturned Pitcher. But I Was Full Like A Stone.

We Laughed And Laughed, Together And Separately, Out Loud And Silently, We Were Determined To Ignore Whatever Needed To Be Ignored, To Build A New World From Nothing If Nothing In Our World Could Be Salvaged, It Was One Of The Best Days Of My Life, A Day During Which I Lived My Life And Didn't Think About My Life At All.

Let Love Write On You For Awhile.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Long Distance Relationship

It Was One Of The Best Days Of My Life, A Day During Which I Lived My Life And Didn't Think About My Life At All.

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

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

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

I Am Not Sad, He Would Repeat To Himself Over And Over, I Am Not Sad. As If He Might One Day Convince Himself. Or Fool Himself. Or Convince Others -- The Only Thing Worse Than Being Sad Is For Others To Know That You Are Sad.

Maybe I'll Try To Be More Patient With Morons.

I Thought About All Of The Things That Everyone Ever Says To Each Other, And How Everyone Is Going To Die, Whether It's In A Millisecond, Or Days, Or Months, Or 76.5 Years, If You Were Just Born. Everything That's Born Has To Die, Which Means Our Lives Are Like Skyscrapers. The Smoke Rises At Different Speeds, But They're All On Fire, And We're All Trapped.

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

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.

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

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.

The French, Who Love Their Dogs, Sometimes Eat Their Horses. The Spanish, Who Love Their Horses, Sometimes Eat Their Cows. The Indians, Who Love Their Cows, Sometimes Eat Their Dogs.

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.

I Never Confused What I Had With What I Was.

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.

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

We Know, At Least, That This Decision (ending Factory Farming) Will Help Prevent Deforestation, Curb Global Warming, Reduce Pollution, Save Oil Reserves, Lessen The Burden On Rural America, Decrease Human Rights Abuses, Improve Publish Health, And Help Eliminate The Most Systematic Animal Abuse In History.

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.

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

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

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

Shyness Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Want.

...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.

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.

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

I Always Write Out Of A Need To Read Something, Rather Than A Need To Write Something.

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.

Weeks Passed Like Boats Waiting To Sail Into The Starless Dawn, We Were Full Of Aimless Endless Darkness.

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.

With Writing, We Have Second Chances.

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.

The Disgraced Usurer Yankel D Took The Baby Girl Home That Evening... He Made A Bed Of Crumpled Newspaper In A Deep Baking Pan And Gently Tucked It In The Oven, So That She Wouldn't Be Disturbed By The Noise Of The Small Falls Outside... When He Pulled Her Out To Feed Her Or Just Hold Her, Her Body Was Tattooed With The Newsprint... Sometimes He Would Rock Her To Sleep In His Arms, And Read Her Left To Right, And Know Everything He Needed To Know About The World. If It Wasn't Written On Her, It Wasn't Important To Him.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

How Would You Judge An Artist Who Mutilated Animals In A Gallery Because It Was Visually Arresting? How Riveting Would The Sound Of A Tortured Animal Need To Be To Make You Want To Hear It That Badly? Try To Imagine Any End Other Than Taste For Which It Would Be Justifiable To Do What We Do To Farmed Animals.

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.

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

We Talked About Nothing In Particular, But It Felt Like We Were Talking About The Most Important Things.

I've Never Particularly Liked Bankers.

This Is My Heart. You Are Touching It With Your Left Hand. You Are Touching It With Your Left Hand, Not Because You Are Left-handed, Although You Might Be, But Because I Am Holding It Against My Heart. What You Are Feeling Is The Beating Of My Heart. It Is What Keeps Me Alive.

We Burned With Love For Ourselves, All Of Us, Starters Of The Fire We Suffered- Our Love Was The Affliction For Which Only Our Love Was The Cure.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

Ninety-eight Percent Of All The Soy That's Raised Goes To Livestock. So People Make Fun Of Vegetarians For Being Tofu Eaters, But No One Eats Tofu Like Steak Eaters, By A Long Shot. It's Also Funny That Tofu Is Held Up As What A Vegetarian Eats. I Mean Maybe I Eat Tofu Once A Month, But Other Than That, Never. All Of It, Statistically Speaking, Is Going To Livestock.

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

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.

...and When Is Enough Proof Enough?

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

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

As Long As I Am Thinking, I Am Alive.

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.

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

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

I 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.

It Is My Great Hope That Our Paths, However Long And Winding, Will Cross Again.

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.

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

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

Animal Experimentation

Why I'm Not Where You Are ...

...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.

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.

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!

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

Cobblestone Streets

What Kind Of World Would We Create If Three Times A Day We Activated Our Compassion And Reason As We Sat Down To Eat, If We Had The Moral Imagination And The Pragmatic Will To Change Our Most Fundamental Act Of Consumption?

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

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

Is That Growing Old? Or Is It Something Worse?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Isn't It Strange How Upset People Get About A Few Dozen Baseball Players Taking Growth Hormones, When We're Doing What We're Doing To Our Food Animals And Feeding Them To Our Children?

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

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

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.

I Couldn't Speak The Language Of His Feelings

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

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.

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

End Of The World

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Frances Hodgson Burnett

Dolores Ibarruri

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