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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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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The Way That I

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Things Were Happening Around Us, But Nothing Was Happening Between Us.

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.

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.

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

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

I Wanted To Cry But I Didn't, I Probably Should Have Cried, I Should Have Drowned Us There In The Room Ending Our Suffering.

I Realized That Your Mother Couldn't See The Emptiness, She Couldn't See Anything...all Of The Words I'd Written To Her Over All Of Those Years, Had I Never Said Anything To Hear At All?

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

We Can't Plead Ignorance, Only Indifference. Those Alive Today Are The Generations That Came To Know Better. We Have The Burden And The Opportunity Of Living In The Moment When The Critique Of Factory Farming Broke Into The Popular Consciousness. We Are The Ones Of Whom It Will Be Fairly Asked, What Did You Do When You Learned The Truth About Eating Animals?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Regret How Much I Believed In The Future.

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Missing Someone

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

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We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other.

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

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...and When Is Enough Proof Enough?

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

And I Wouldn't Say No To Something Sweet.

Something Sweet

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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Everything Is To Protect You. I Exist In Case You Need To Be Protected.

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

End Of The World

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

Look, Taste Is Clearly The Crudest Of Our Senses: This Is Scientifically, Objectively Factual. It Is Less Nuanced. Eyesight Is Extraordinary - Hearing, Touch. I Find People Who Devote Their Whole Lives To Taste A Little Strange.

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

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.

...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.

I'm Less Worried About Accomplishment - As Younger People Always Can't Help But Be - And More Concerned With Spending My Time Well, Spending Time With My Family, And Reading, Learning Things.

Brod Discovered 613 Sadnesses, Each Perfectly Unique, Each A Singular Emotion, No More Similar To Any Other Sadness Than To Anger, Ecstasy, Guilt, Or Frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness Of Domesticated Birds. Sadness Of Being Sad In Front Of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness Of Love Without Release.

One Hundred Years Of Joy Can Be Erased In One Second

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.

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

I Made Up My Mind That Nothing,, Nothing Was Going To Stop Me Not Even Me.

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

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

People Don’t Care Enough. They Don’t Get Worked Up Enough. They Don’t Get Angry Enough. They Don’t Get Passionate Enough. I’d Rather Somebody Hate What I Do Than Be Indifferent To It.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Afraid Of Death

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.

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

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

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

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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.

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.

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

Someone You Love

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

She Was Not Crying Which Surprised Me Very Much But I Understand Now That She Had Found Places For Her Melancholy That Were Behind More Masks Than Only Her Eyes

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.

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-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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 Word Vegetarian, I Think, Does A Disservice Because There Are A Lot Of People Who Care But Maybe Don't Care, Or Can't Care In An Ultimate Way. If You Think About Environmentalism, Nobody Would Ask, "are You An Environmentalist Or Not?" The Question Doesn't Make Any Sense.

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

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

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.

Sometimes You Have To Put Your Fears In Order.

Can’t You Even Tell Me If I’m On The Right Track?" Buckminster Purred, And Dad Shrugged His Shoulders Again. "but If You Don’t Tell Me Anything, How Can I Ever Be Right?" He Circled Something In An Article And Said, "another Way Of Looking At It Would Be, How Could You Ever Be Wrong?

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

She Maintained A Careful Balance By Her Window, Never Allowing The Men To Come Too Close, Never Allowing Them To Stray Too Far.

I Never Confused What I Had With What I Was.

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

How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her.

The Bruises Go Away, And So Does How You Hate, And So Does The Feeling That Everything You Receive From Life Is Something You Have Earned.

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

I Zipped Myself All The Way Into The Sleeping Bag Of Myself, Not Because I Was Hurt, And Not Because I Had Broken Something, But Because They Were Cracking Up.

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.

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.

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

Yesterday I Wanted To Turn Inside Out.

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

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.

Silently The Animal Catches Our Glance. The Animal Looks At Us, And Whether We Look Away (from The Animal, Our Plate, Our Concern, Ourselves) Or Not, We Are Exposed. Whether We Change Our Lives Or Do Nothing, We Have Responded. To Do Nothing Is To Do Something

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

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

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

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.

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.

In The Morning, When The Nothing Vase Casts A Something Shadow, Like The Memory Of Someone You've Lost, What Can You Say About That?

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

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

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

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

Just How Destructive Does A Culinary Preference Have To Be Before We Decide To Eat Something Else? If Contributing To The Suffering Of Billions Of Animals That Live Miserable Lives And (quite Often) Die In Horrific Ways Isn't Motivating, What Would Be? If Being The Number One Contributor To The Most Serious Threat Facing The Planet (global Warming) Isn't Enough, What Is? And If You Are Tempted To Put Off These Questions Of Conscience, To Say Not Now, Then When?

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.

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

The Only Way To Overcome Sadness Is To Consume It.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Thought, It's A Shame That We Have To Live, But It's A Tragedy That We Get To Live Only One Life, Because If I'd Had Two Lives, I Would Have Spent One Of Them With Her.

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

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

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.

For A Long Time, I Thought I Would Like To Be A Doctor. Such A Good Profession. So Explicitly Good. Never A Waste Of Time.

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