Background Image

...

Some Make Their Worlds Without Knowing It. Their Universes Are Just Sesame Seeds And Three-day Weekends And Dial Tones And Skinned Knees And Physics And Driftwood And Emerald Earrings And Books Dropped In Bathtubs And Holes In Guitars And Plastic And Empathy And Hardwood And Heavy Water And High Black Stockings And The History Of The Vikings And Brass And Obsolescence And Burnt Hair And Collapsed Souffles And The Impossibility Of Not Falling In Love In An Art Museum With The Person Standing Next To You Looking At The Same Painting And All The Other Things That Just Happen And Are.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Some Make Their Worlds

Jonathan Safran Foer

...

Some Make Their Worlds Without Knowing It. Their Universes Are Just Sesame Seeds And Three-day Weekends And Dial Tones And Skinned Knees And Physics And Driftwood And Emerald Earrings And Books Dropped In Bathtubs And Holes In Guitars And Plastic And Empathy And Hardwood And Heavy Water And High Black Stockings And The History Of The Vikings And Brass And Obsolescence And Burnt Hair And Collapsed Souffles And The Impossibility Of Not Falling In Love In An Art Museum With The Person Standing Next To You Looking At The Same Painting And All The Other Things That Just Happen And Are.

Views: 5

Topic

Falling In Love

More From Jonathan Safran Foer

In America Right Now, We Use Words Like 'smart' To Talk About Bombs. American Rhetoric Is Grounded In Ideas Of Capital-g Good, Capital-e Evil, And It's Very Clear Who Is On Which Side. But In A Book You Can Do Just The Opposite. You Can Use All Lower-case Words.

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

(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.)

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

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

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

Everything Is Illuminated

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.

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

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.

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.

It Is Better To Lose Than Never To Have Had.

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

It Took Me As Long As I Had Known Him To Get Rid Of All Of His Words. Like Turning An Hourglass Over.

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.

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.

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.

He Was Not Such A Special Person. He Loved To Read Very Much, And Also To Write. He Was A Poet, And He Exhibited Me Many Of His Poems. I Remember Many Of Them. They Were Silly, You Could Say, And About Love. He Was Always In His Room Writing Those Things, And Never With People. I Used To Tell Him, What Good Is All That Love Doing On Paper? I Said, Let Love Write On You For A Little. But He Was So Stubborn. Or Perhaps He Was Only Timid.

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

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

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.

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.

I Love The Idea Of Books Being More Than Books, Or Being, Rather, Something Other Than Books.

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!

They Do Not Desire Anything More Than Everything They Have Known.

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

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

With Writing, We Have Second Chances.

She Felt As If She Were Brimming, Always Producing And Hoarding More Love Inside Her. But There Was No Release.

The Animals Are Those Things That God Likes But Doesn't Love.

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

My Boots Were So Heavy That I Was Glad There Was A Column Beneath Us. How Could Such A Lonely Person Have Been Living So Close To Me My Whole Life? If I Had Known, I Would Have Gone Up To Keep Him Company.

You're Incredibly Beautiful,' I Told Her, Because She Was Fat, So I Thought It Would Be An Especially Nice Compliment, And Also Make Her Like Me Again, Even Though I Was Sexist.

[…] But I Believe That Things Are Extremely Complicated, And Her Looking Over Me Was As Complicated As Anything Could Ever Be. But It Was Also Incredibly Simple.

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

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.

In Bed That Night I Invented A Special Drain That Would Be Underneath Every Pillow In New York, And Would Connect To The Reservoir. Whenever People Cried Themselves To Sleep, The Tears Would All Go To The Same Place, And In The Morning The Weatherman Could Report If The Water Level Of The Reservoir Of Tears Had Gone Up Or Down, And You Could Know If New York Is In Heavy Boots.

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.

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.

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

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

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

...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.

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.

And The Joys I've Felt Have Not Always Been Joyous. I Could Have Lived Differently. When I Was Your Age, My Grandfather Bought Me A Ruby Bracelet. It As Too Big For Me An Would Slide Up And Down My Arm. It Was Almost A Necklace. He Later Told Me That He Had Asked The Jeweler Make That Way. Its Size Was Supposed To Be A Symbol Of His Love. More Rubies, More Love. But I Could Not Wear It Comfortably. I Could Not Wear It At All. So Here Is The Point Of Everything I Have Been Trying To Say. If I Were To Give A Bracelet To You, Now, I Would Measure Your Wrist Twice

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

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 Have No Need For The Past, I Thought, Like A Child. I Did Not Consider That The Past Might Have A Need For Me.

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

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.

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 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.

Grandfather Informs Me That Is Not Possible.

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

People Shouldn't Be Allowed To Get Married Until It's Too Late To Have Kids.

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

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.

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

For How Long Could We Fail Until We Surrendered?

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

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.

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.

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.

I Used To Think That Humor Was The Only Way To Appreciate How Wonderful And Terrible The World Is, To Celebrate How Big Life Is. But Now I Think The Opposite. Humor Is A Way Of Shrinking From That Wonderful And Terrible World.

I Said I Kicked A French Chicken In The Stomach Once." "huh?" "it Said, 'oeuf.'" "what Is That?" "it's A Joke. Do You Want To Hear Another, Or Have You Already Had Un Oeuf?

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.

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

How Beautiful Is Forgetting! What Relief It Would Be For The World To Lose Some Of Its Contents.

So She Had To Satisfy Herself With The Idea Of Love - Loving The Loving Of Things Whose Existence She Didn't Care At All About. Love Itself Became The Object Of Her Love. She Loved Herself In Love, She Loved Loving Love, As Love Loves Loving, And Was Able, In That Way, To Reconcile Herself With A World That Fell So Short Of What She Would Have Hoped For. It Was Not The World That Was The Great And Saving Lie, But Her Willingness To Make It Beautiful And Fair, To Live A Once-removed Life, In A World Once-removed From The One In Which Everyone Else Seemed To Exist.

It’s Much Easier To Be Cruel Than One Might Think.

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.

[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!

I'm A Novelist, I'm Not An Activist. I'm Not A Non-fiction Writer, I'm Not A Journalist. I'm Not A Foodie, I'm Not Even Really An Animal Person, Or An Environmentalist. I Did The Best I Could With This, But It's Not Who I Am.

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?

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

[...]it Is As If After Surviving So Much, There Was No Longer Reason To Survive.

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

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

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.

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

Cobblestone Streets

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

Love...is The Immovability Of Truth.

I'm So Afraid Of Losing Something I Love That I Refuse To Love Anything

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

I Couldn't Speak The Language Of His Feelings

Almost Always When I Told Someone I Was Writing A Book About "eating Animals", They Assumed, Even Without Knowing Anything About My Views, That It Was A Case For Vegetarianism. It's A Telling Assumption, One That Implies Not Only That A Thorough Inquiry Into Animal Agriculture Would Lead One Away From Eating Meat, But That Most People Already Know That To Be The Case.

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

I Felt Suddenly Shy. I Was Not Used To Shy. I Was Used To Shame. Shyness Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Want. Shame Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Do Not Want.

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

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

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."

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

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

I'm Not Better Than Anyone, And I'm Not Trying To Convince People To Live By My Standards Of What's Right. I'm Trying To Convince Them To Live By Their Own.

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

It’s A Rule That We Never Listen To Sad Music, We Made That Rule Early On, Songs Are As Sad As The Listener, We Hardly Ever Listen To Music.

...because He Had Been Waiting For Someone To Come Back To Him, So Every Time Someone Knocked On The Door, He Couldn't Stop Himself From Hoping It Might Be That Person, Even Though He Knew He Shouldn't Hope.

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

I'm Grateful For Anything That Reminds Me Of What's Possible In This Life. Books Can Do That. Films Can Do That. Music Can Do That. School Can Do That. It's So Easy To Allow One Day To Simply Follow Into The Next, But Every Once In A While We Encounter Something That Shows Us That Anything Is Possible, That Dramatic Change Is Possible, That Something New Can Be Made, That Laughter Can Be Shared.

There Were Things I Wanted To Tell Him. But I Knew They Would Hurt Him. So I Buried Them, And Let Them Hurt Me.

Being With Him Made My Brain Quiet. I Didn't Have To Invent A Thing.

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

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.

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

Second Thoughts

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

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.

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

If We Are Not Given The Option To Live Without Violence, We Are Given The Choice To Center Our Meals Around Harvest Or Slaughter, Husbandry Or War. We Have Chosen Slaughter. We Have Chosen War. That's The Truest Version Of Our Story Of Eating Animals. Can We Tell A New Story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Is That Growing Old? Or Is It Something Worse?

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

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

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

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

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

...and When Is Enough Proof Enough?

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

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.)

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

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.

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.

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

Only A Few Months Into Our Marriage," Writes The Grandfather, "we Started Marking Off Areas In The Apartment As 'nothing Places,' In Which One Could Be Assured Of Complete Privacy, We Agreed That We Never Would Look At The Marked-off Zones, That They Would Be Nonexistent Territories In The Apartment In Which One Could Temporarily Cease To Exist.

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

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.

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

My Wife And I Have Chosen To Bring Up Our Children As Vegetarians. In Another Time Or Place, We Might Have Made A Different Decision. But The Realities Of Our Present Moment Compelled Us To Make That Choice.

We Need A Better Way To Talk About Eating Animals, A Way That Doesn't Ignore, Or Even Just Shruggingly Accept Things Like Habits, Cravings, Family And History, But Rather Incorporates Them Into The Conversation. The More They Are Allowed In, The More Strongly We Will Want To Follow Our Best Instincts.

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.

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

[grandfather] Would Manufacture Funnies With Grandmother Before She Died About How He Was In Love With Other Women Who Were Not Her. She Knew It Was Only Funnies Because She Would Laugh In Volumes. 'anna,' He Would Say, 'i Am Going To Marry That One With The Pink Hat.' And She Would Say, 'to Whom Are You Going To Marry Her?' And He Would Say, 'to Me.' I Would Laugh Very Much In The Back Seat, And She Would Say To Him, 'but You Are No Priest.' And He Would Say, 'i Am Today.' And She Would Say, 'today You Believe In God?' And He Would Say, 'today I Believe In Love.

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.

She Wants To Know If I Love Her, That's All Anyone Wants From Anyone Else, Not Love Itself But The Knowledge That Love Is There, Like New Batteries In The Flashlight In The Emergency Kit In The Hall Closet.

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

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

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

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

...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.

Only Humans Can Cry Tears.

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

There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

Understanding Yourself

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone.

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

Raising Your Kids Vegetarian Is A Great Way To Encourage Them To Do The Opposite Of What You Want! But The Goal Is Not To Have Them Have The Same Values That I Have. It's To Have Them Act On Their Values.

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.

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

We Are Lying To Ourselves And To Each Other. Lying About What? I Don't Care If We're Lying. I Am A Bad Person. I Don't Care. I Don't Care What You Are.

It Shouldn't Be The Consumer's Responsibility To Figure Out What's Cruel And What's Kind, What's Environmentally Destructive And What's Sustainable. Cruel And Destructive Food Products Should Be Illegal. We Don't Need The Option Of Buying Children's Toys Made With Lead Paint, Or Aerosols With Chlorofluorocarbons, Or Medicines With Unlabeled Side Effects. And We Don't Need The Option Of Buying Factory-farmed Animals.

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Be The Instrument Playing The Sound Of Your Life's Passing

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

I Feel Too Much. That's What's Going On.' 'do You Think One Can Feel Too Much? Or Just Feel In The Wrong Ways?' 'my Insides Don't Match Up With My Outsides.' 'do Anyone's Insides And Outsides Match Up?' 'i Don't Know. I'm Only Me.' 'maybe That's What A Person's Personality Is: The Difference Between The Inside And Outside.' 'but It's Worse For Me.' 'i Wonder If Everyone Thinks It's Worse For Him.' 'probably. But It Really Is Worse For Me.

Eating A Piece Of Meat, At Its Most Efficient, We Could Say Is Like Throwing Away Six Times That Amount Of Food Every Time You Eat It Because You're Recycling All Those Calories Through It. I Know A Lot Of People Who Came To This Issue Not Through Animal Welfare But Through Wastefulness.

I Knew That Our Time Together Was Almost Over, I Asked Her If She Liked Sports, She Asked Me If I Liked Chess, I Asked Her If She Liked Fallen Trees, She Went Home With Her Father, The Center Of Me Followed Her, But I Was Left With The Shell Of Me, I Needed To See Her Again, I Couldn't Explain My Need To Myself, And That's Why It Was Such A Beautiful Need, There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

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

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

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.

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

I Tried The Key In All The Doors, Even Though He Said He Didn't Recognize It. It's Not That I Didn't Trust Him, Becuase I Did. It's That At The End Of My Search I Wanted To Be Able To Say: I Don't Know How I Could Have Tried Harder.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

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

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

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

...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.

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

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

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

Animal Experimentation

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

Technology Celebrates Connectedness, But Encourages Retreat.

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

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.

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

This Is The Sixty-nine," I Told Him, Presenting The Magazine In Front Of Him. I Put My Fingers -- Two Of Them -- On The Action, So That He Would Not Overlook It. "why Is It Dubbed Sixty-nine?" He Asked, Because He Is A Person Hot On Fire With Curiosity. "it Was Invented In 1969. My Friend Gregory Knows A Friend Of The Nephew Of The Inventor." "what Did People Do Before 1969?" "merely Blowjobs And Masticating Box, But Never In Chorus.

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?

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?

Trending Author

Benito Mussolini

Alexandre Dumas

Mary Higgins Clark

Category