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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?

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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This Isn't Animal Experimentation,

Jonathan Safran Foer

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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?

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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.

Writing's Funny, It's Like Walking Down A Hall In The Dark Looking For The Light Switch, And Suddenly You Find It, Flip It On, And Then You Discover The Hallway You Passed Through Is Papered With The Novel You've Written.

We Cracked Up Together, Which Was Necessary, Because She Loved Me Again.

I Put My Hand On Him. Touching Him Has Always Been Important To Me, It Was Something I Lived For. I Never Could Explain Why. Little, Nothing Touches, My Fingers Against His Shoulder, The Outsides Of Our Thighs Touching As We Squeeled Together On The Bus. I Couldnt Explain It, But I Needed It. Sometimes I Imagined Stiching All Of Our Little Touches Together. How Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Fingers Brushing Against Each Other Does It Take To Make Love?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

If Nothing Matters, There's Nothing To Save.

Nothing Matters

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

...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.

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

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

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Sadness Of Love Without Release.

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

Only Humans Can Cry Tears.

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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.

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

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.

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Let Love Write On You For Awhile.

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

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.

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How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her.

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other.

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

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One Hundred Years Of Joy Can Be Erased In One Second

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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?

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

The End Of Suffering Does Not Justify The Suffering, What A Mess I Am, I Thought, What A Fool, How Foolish And Narrow, How Worthless, How Pinched And Pathetic, How Helpless.

We Are Not Long-term Beings. Not Heroes Of Romances In Many Volumes. For One Gesture, For One Word Alone, We Shall Make The Effort. We Openly Admit: Our Creations Will Be Temporary. We Shall Have This As Our Aim: A Gesture.

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

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.

Suddenly Yankel Was Overcome With A Fear Of Dying, Stronger Than He Felt When His Parents Passed Of Natural Causes, Stronger Than When His Only Brother Was Killed In The Flour Mill Or When His Children Died, Stronger Even Than When He Was A Child And It First Occurred To Him That He Must Try To Understand What It Could Mean Not To Be Alive -- To Be Not In Darkness, Not In Unfeeling -- To Be Not Being, Not To Be.

It Would Be Refreshing To Have A Politician Try To Defend Guns Without Any Reference To The Second Amendment, But On The Merits Of Guns.

Second Amendment

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

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.

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

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.

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?

If We Communicated With Something Like Music, We Would Never Be Misunderstood, Because There Is Nothing In Music To Understand...... But Until We Find This New Way Of Speaking, Until We Can Find A Nonapproximate Vocabulary, Nonsense Words Are The Best Thing We've Got. Ifactifice Is One Such Word.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 Regret How Much I Believed In The Future.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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?

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

Afraid Of Death

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

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.

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.

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.

Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

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.

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.

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

Also, I Designed A Pretty Fascinating Bracelet, Where You Put A Rubber Band Around Your Favorite Book Of Poems For A Year, And Then You Take It Off And Wear It.

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?

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

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.

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.

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