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What Is Suffering? I'm Not Sure What It Is, But I Know That Suffering Is The Name We Give To The Origin Of All The Sighs, Screams, And Groans — Small And Large, Crude And Multifaceted — That Concern Us. The Word Defines Our Gaze Even More Than What We Are Looking At.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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What Is Suffering? I'm

Jonathan Safran Foer

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What Is Suffering? I'm Not Sure What It Is, But I Know That Suffering Is The Name We Give To The Origin Of All The Sighs, Screams, And Groans — Small And Large, Crude And Multifaceted — That Concern Us. The Word Defines Our Gaze Even More Than What We Are Looking At.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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It Was Terrible. All Of The Things We Couldn't Share. The Room Was Filled With Conversations We Weren't Having.

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.

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.

Why Are Entire Flocks Of Industrial Birds Dying At Once? And What About The People Eating Those Birds? Just The Other Day, One Of The Local Pediatricians Was Telling Me He's Seeing All Kinds Of Illnesses That He Never Used To See. Not Only Juvenile Diabetes, But Inflammatory And Autoimmune Diseases That A Lot Of The Docs Don't Even Know What To Call. And Girls Are Going Through Puberty Much Earlier; And Kids Are Allergic To Just About Everything, And Asthma Is Out Of Control. Everyone Knows It's Our Foods... Kids Today Are The First Generation To Grow Up On This Stuff.

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

...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.

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.

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

Getting To Know Each Other

What? She Said Once To Herself, And Then Once Aloud, What? She Felt A Total Displacement, Like A Spinning Globe Brought To A Sudden Halt By The Light Touch Of A Finger. How Did She End Up Here, Like This? How Could There Have Been So Much - So Many Moments, So Many People And Things, So Many Razors And Pillows, Timepieces And Subtle Coffins - Without Her Being Aware? How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her?

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

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.

I Flipped Back Through The Pad Of Paper While I Thought About What Stephen Hawking Would Do Next.

They Reciprocated The Great And Saving Lie--that Our Love For Things Is Greater Than Our Lover For Our Love For Things--willfully Playing The Parts They Wrote For Themselves, Willfully Creating And Believing Fictions Necessary For Life.

She Brushed Her Eyelashes Against His Chest.

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.

Whether We're Talking About Fish Species, Pigs, Or Some Other Eaten Animal, Is Such Suffering The Most Important Thing In The World? Obviously Not. But That's Not The Question. Is It More Important That Sushi, Bacon, Or Chicken Nuggets? That's The Question.

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.

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

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

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Woke Up Once In The Middle Of The Night, And Buckminster's Paws Were On My Eyelids. He Must Have Been Feeling My Nightmares.

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

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.

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

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Language Is Never Fully Trustworthy, But When It Comes To Eating Animals, Words Are As Often Used To Misdirect And Camouflage As They Are To Communicate. Some Words, Like Veal, Help Us Forget What We Are Actually Talking About. Some, Like Free-range, Can Mislead Those Whose Consciences Seek Clarification. Some, Like Happy, Mean The Opposite Of What They Would Seem. And Some, Like Natural, Mean Next To Nothing.

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

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

I Was More Alone Than If I Had Been Alone.

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

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

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

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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.

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

She Was With Me. She Did All Of Those Things And So Many More, Things I Would Never Tell Anyone, And She Never Even Loved Me. Now That’s Love.

Everything Is Illuminated

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

It Would Be Possible, In Theory, For Life And Art To Be Reversed.

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

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 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.

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

Grandfather Informs Me That Is Not Possible.

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

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She Avoids Mirrors, And Lifts A Powerful Telescope To Find Herself.

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?

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Succotash My Balzac, Dipshiitake.

Nothing Is Beautiful And True.

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

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

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!

She Spent An Afternoon Staring At Their Front Door. Waiting For Someone? Yankel Asked. What Color Is This? He Stood Very Close To The Door, Letting The End Of His Nose Touch The Peephole. He Licked The Wood And Joked, It Certainly Tastes Like Red. Yes, It Is Red, Isn't It? Seems So. She Buried Her Head In Her Hands. But Couldn't It Be Just A Bit More Red?

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

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.

August Has Passed, And Yet Summer Continues By Force To Grow Days. They Sprout Secretly Between The Chapters Of The Year, Covertly Included Between Its Pages.

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.

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

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

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

I'm Not Funny. People Assume That Because My Books Are Funny, I'll Be Funny In Real Life. It's The Inevitable Disappointment Of Meeting Me.

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.

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

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone.

I Never Confused What I Had With What I Was.

We Eat As Sons And Daughters, As Families, As Communities, As Generations, As Nations, And Increasingly As A Globe. We Can't Stop Our Eating From Radiating Influence Even If We Want To.

... The Man Took My Passport And Asked Me The Purpose Of My Visit, I Wrote In My Daybook, 'to Mourn,' And Then, 'to Try To Live,' He Gave Me A Look And Asked If I Would Consider That Business Or Pleasure, I Wrote, 'neither.' 'for How Long Do You Plan To Mourn And Try To Live?' I Wrote, 'for The Rest Of My Life.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

One Of The Things That I Love About Writing Novels Is That It Really Doesn't Matter What Next Step You Take As Long As You're Pursuing Some Intuition Or Instinct. Of Course, Then, Intuitions Or Instincts Don't Make For Great Novels, But They Often Make For Good First Drafts.

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

Cher Marcel, Allô. I Am Oskar's Mom. I Have Thought About It A Ton, And I Have Decided That It Isn't Obvious Why Oskar Should Go To French Lessons, So He Will No Longer Be Going To Go See You On Sundays Like He Used To. I Want To Thank You Very Much For Everything You Have Taught Oskar, Particularly The Conditional Tense, Which Is Weird. Obviously, There's No Need To Call Me When Oskar Doesn't Come To His Lessons, Because I Already Know, Because This Was My Decision. Also, I Will Keep Sending You Checks, Because You Are A Nice Guy. Votre Ami Dévouée, Mademoiselle Schell.

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

I Know You Look Both Ways Before You Cross The Street, But I Want You To Look Both Ways A Second Time, Because I Told You To.

He Couldn't Bear To Live, But He Couldn't Bear To Die. He Couldn't Bear The Thought Of He Making Love To Someone Else, But Neither Could He Bear The Absence Of The Thought. And As For The Note, He Couldn't Bear To Keep It, But He Couldn't Bear To Destroy It Either.

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.

Because It Was Starting To Get Dark, And Because The Streets Were Crowded, I Bumped Into A Googolplex People. Who Were They? Where Were They Going? What Were They Looking For? I Wanted To Hear Their Heartbeats, And I Wanted Them To Hear Mine.

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.

A Few Days After We Came Home From The Hospital, I Sent A Letter To A Friend, Including A Photo Of My Son And Some First Impressions Of Fatherhood. He Responded, Simply, 'everything Is Possible Again.' It Was The Perfect Thing To Write, Because That Was Exactly How It Felt. We Could Retell Our Stories And Make Them Better, More Representative Or Aspirational. Or We Could Choose To Tell Different Stories. The World Itself Had Another Chance.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Just To Be A Functioning Adult In The World, We Develop All Of These Layers Of Protection. When We See Homeless People, We Don't Cry, Even Though Homeless People Probably Deserve Our Tears - You Know, It's A Horrible Thing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Years Were Passing Through The Spaces Between Moments.

Succotash My Cocker Spaniel, You Fudging Crevasse-hole Dipshiitake!

I Got Tired, I Told Him. Not Worn Out, But Worn Through. Like One Of Those Wives Who Wakes Up One Morning And Says I Can't Bake Any More Bread.

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

I Asked Her, "are You An Optimist Or A Pessimist?" She Looked At Her Watch And Said, "i'm Optimistic." "then I Have Some Bad News For You, Because Humans Are Going To Destroy Each Others As Soon As It Becomes Easy Enough To, Which Will Be Very Soon." "why Do Beautiful Songs Make You Sad?" "because They Aren't True." "never?" "nothing Is Beautiful And True." She Smiled, But In A Way That Wasn't Just Happy, And Said, "you Sound Just Like Dad.

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

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

It’s Hard To Say Goodbye To The Place You’ve Lived. It Can Be As Hard As Saying Goodbye To A Person.

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.

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.

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.

My Dream Went All The Way Back To The Beginning. The Rain Rose Into The Clouds, And The Animals Descended The Ramp.

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.

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.

Sometimes You Have To Put Your Fears In Order.

[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.

I'm Sorry For My Inability To Let Unimportant Things Go, For My Inability To Hold On To The Important Things.

Unimportant Things

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.

You Have To Do Something Bad To Do Something Good.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Once You Hear Something, You Can Never Return To The Time Before You Heard It.

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

She Said, "do You Have More Things That You Need, Or More That You Don't Need?" I Said, "it Depends On What It Means To Need.

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.

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

Someone You Love

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.

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

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.

The American Dream Itself Is Declining.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

She Wanted Nothing More Than Someone To Miss, To Touch, With Whom To Speak Like A Child, With Whom To Be A Child.

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

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

She Saw Through The Shell Of Me Into The Center Of Me

(what Are Your Ghosts Like?) (they Are On The Insides Of The Lids Of My Eyes.) (this Is Also Where My Ghosts Reside.) (you Have Ghosts?) (of Course I Have Ghosts.) (but You Are A Child.) (i Am Not A Child.) (but You Have Not Known Love.) (these Are My Ghosts, The Spaces Amid Love.)

Sometimes I Imagined Stitching All Of Our Little Touches Together. How Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Fingers Brushing Against Each Other Does It Take To Make Love? Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

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.

Your Dad Didn't Die, So I Won't Be Able To Explain It To You.

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.

Memory Was Supposed To Fill The Time, But It Made Time A Hole To Be Filled.

I Wanted To Tell Her Everything, Maybe If I'd Been Able To, We Could Have Lived Differently, Maybe I'd Be There With You Now Instead Of Here. Maybe... If I'd Said, 'i'm So Afraid Of Losing Something I Love That I Refuse To Love Anything,' Maybe That Would Have Made The Impossible Possible. Maybe, But I Couldn't Do It, I Had Buried Too Much Too Deeply Inside Me. And Here I Am, Instead Of There.

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

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

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.

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?

There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

Understanding Yourself

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.

[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!

We Are Breeding Creatures Incapable Of Surviving In Any Place Other Than The Most Artificial Settings. We Have Focused The Awesome Power Of Modern Genetic Knowledge To Bring Into Being Animals That Suffer More.

...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.

Mom Said, "his Spirit Is There," And That Made Me Really Angry. I Told Her, "dad Didn't Have A Spirit! He Had Cells!" "his Memory Is There." "his Memory Is Here," I Said, Pointing At My Head. "dad Had A Spirit," She Said, Like She Was Rewinding A Bit In Our Conversation. I Told Her, "he Had Cells, And Now They're On Rooftops, And In The River, And In The Lungs Of Millions Of People Around New York, Who Breathe Him Every Time They Speak!

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

People Who Become Used To Saying Little Become Used To Feeling Little.

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