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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.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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This Is The Sixty-nine,"

Jonathan Safran Foer

...

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.

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

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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.

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

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.

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

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

Do You Eat Chicken Because You Are Familiar With The Scientific Literature On Them And Have Decided That Their Suffering Doesn't Matter, Or Do You Do It Because It Tastes Good?

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.

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

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

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

We Believed In Our Grandmother’s Cooking More Fervently Than We Believed In God.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Would Have Done Anything For Him. Maybe That Was My Sickness. We Made Love In Nothing Places And Turned The Lights Off. It Felt Like Crying. We Could Not Look At Each Other. It Always Had To Be From Behind. Like That First Time. And I Knew He Wasn't Thinking Of Me. He Squeezed My Sides So Hard, And Pushed So Hard. Like He Was Trying To Push Me Through To Somewhere Else. Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

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.

It's A Good Rule Of Thumb, It Seems To Me: If You're Not Allowed To See Where Something Comes From, Don't Put It In Your Mouth.

Years Were Passing Through The Spaces Between Moments.

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

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.

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.

Just Because You're An Atheist, That Doesn't Mean You Wouldn't Love For Things To Have Reasons For Why They Are.

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

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

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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.

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

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

I Can't Even Say 'hair Pie,'' I Told Him, 'unless I'm Talking About An Actual Pie Made Out Of Rabbits.

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

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

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Writers Now Are Putting Total Faith In Designers At Apple And Amazon. It's Almost Like A Race-car Driver Having No Input Into How Cars Are Designed.

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

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

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

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

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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 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.

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.

[…] 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.

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

I Wanted To Protect Him, Which I Was Sure I Could Do, Even If I Could Not Protect Myself.

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

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

So Many People Enter And Leave Your Life! Hundreds Of Thousands Of People! You Have To Keep The Door Open So They Can Come In! But It Also Means You Have To Let Them Go!

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

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

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.

Please Be Truthful, But Also Please Be Benevolent, Please.

So Many Visitors Came To Rub And Kiss Different Parts Of Him For The Fulfillment Of Their Various Wishes That His Entire Body Had To Be Rebronzed Every Month. He Was A Changing God, Destroyed And Recreated By His Believers, Destroyed And Recreated By Their Belief... Those Who Prayed Came To Believe Less And Less In The God Of Their Creation And More And More In Their Belief.

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

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

Not Responding Is A Response--we Are Equally Responsible For What We Don't Do. In The Case Of Animal Slaughter, To Throw Your Hands In The Air Is To Wrap Your Fingers Around A Knife Handle.

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.

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.

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.

I Observe, I Write, I Try Not To Remember The Life That I Didn't Want To Loose But Lost And Have To Remember, Being Here Fills My Heart With So Much Joy, Even If The Joy Isn't Mine, And At The End Of The Day I Fill The Suitcase With Old News.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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 Went To The Guest Room And Pretended To Write. I Hit The Space Bar Again And Again And Again. My Life Story Was Spaces.

We Shouldn't Be Intimidated By Someone Else's Idea Of Perfection If It Will Prevent Us From Taking Steps We Actively Want To Take.

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.

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.

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.

She Wrote, I Wish I Could Be A Girl Again, With A Chance To Live My Life Again. I Have Suffered So Much More Than I Needed To. And The Joys I Have Felt Have Not Always Been Joyous. I Could Have Lived Differently.

The Gift Is For You...the Surprise Is For Me.

Every Moment Before This One Depends On This One.

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

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

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

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.

For How Long Could We Fail Until We Surrendered?

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.

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

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

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.

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

Second Thoughts

Instead Of Singing In The Shower, I Would Write Out The Lyrics Of My Favourite Songs, The Ink Would Turn The Water Blue Or Red Or Green, And The Music Would Run Down My Legs.

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.

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.

It's So Hard To Express Yourself.' I Understand This.' I Want To Express Myself.' The Same Is True For Me.' I'm Looking For My Voice.' It's In Your Mouth.' I Want To Do Something I'm Not Ashamed Of.' Something You Are Proud Of, Yes?' Not Even. I Just Don't Want To Be Ashamed.

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 Said, 'believe It Or Not, I Used To Be Idealistic.' I Asked Her What 'idealistic' Meant. 'it Means You Live By What You Think Is Right.' 'you Don't Do That Anymore?' 'there Are Questions I Don't Ask Anymore.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Could Not Believe In A God That Would Challenge Faith Like This.

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

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

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 Ran Rather Than Walked, Anxious To Lose My Way. All I Wanted Was To Be Unsure.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

She Brushed Her Eyelashes Against His Chest.

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.

From The Movie "everything Is Illuminated" Based On A Book By Jonathan Safran Foer: I Have Reflected Many Times Upon Our Rigid Search. 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. Like You Say, Inside Out. Jonathan, In This Way, I Will Always Be Along The Side Of Your Life. And You Will Always Be Along The Side Of Mine.

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

There Is A Glaring Reason That The Necessary Total Ban On Nontherapeutic Use Of Antibiotics Hasn't Happened: The Factory Farm Industry, Allied With The Pharmaceutical Industry, Has More Power Than Public-health Professionals.

Health Professionals

What The Meat Industry Figured Out Is That You Don't Need Healthy Animals To Make A Profit. Sick Animals Are More Profitable... Factory Farms Calculate How Close To Death They Can Keep Animals Without Killing Them. That's The Business Model. How Quickly They Can Be Made To Grow, How Tightly They Can Be Packed, How Much Or How Little Can They Eat, How Sick They Can Get Without Dying...we Live In A World In Which It's Conventional To Treat An Animal Like A Block Of Wood.

Dogs Are Wonderful, And In Many Ways Unique. But They Are Remarkably Unremarkable In Their Intellectual And Experiential Capacities. Pigs Are Every Bit As Intelligent And Feeling, By Any Sensible Definition Of The Words. They Can't Hop Into The Back Of A Volvo, But They Can Fetch, Run And Play, Be Mischievous, And Reciprocate Affection. So Why Don't They Get To Curl Up By The Fire? Why Can't They At Least Be Spared Being Tossed On The Fire?

What's So Horrible About Being Dead Forever, And Not Feeling Anything, And Not Even Dreaming? What's So Great About Feeling And Dreaming?

There Has Yet To Be A Human To Survive A Span Of History Without At Least One End Of The World.

End Of The World

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.

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

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.

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

The Secret Was A Hole In The Middle Of Me That Every Happy Thing Fell Into.

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

Getting To Know Each Other

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

I Was More Alone Than If I Had Been Alone.

I Felt, That Night, On That Stage, Under That Skull, Incredibly Close To Everything In The Universe, But Also Extremely Alone. I Wondered, For The First Time In My Life, If Life Was Worth All The Work It Took To Live. What Exactly Made It Worth It? What's So Horrible About Being Dead Forever, And Not Feeling Anything, And Not Even Dreaming? What's So Great About Feeling And Dreaming?

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

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?

Thanksgiving Is The Holiday That Encompasses All Others. All Of Them, From Martin Luther King Day To Arbor Day To Christmas To Valentine's Day, Are In One Way Or Another About Being Thankful.

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

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other, How Many Imposters Do I Have? Do We All Make The Same Mistakes, Or Has One Of Us Gotten It Right, Or Even Just A Bit Less Wrong, Am I The Imposter?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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.

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.

There Are More Obese People In The World Than Starving People. As China And India Start To Develop Our Eating Habits - And Not By Accident But Because Agribusiness Is Going Over There And Imposing Our Habits On Them - If The Population Doesn't Increase At All, We'll Have To Raise Twice As Many Animals As We Do.

If We Communicated With Something Like Music, We Would Never Be Misunderstood, Because There Is Nothing In Music To Understand.

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

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

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Salvatore Quasimodo

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