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(you Do Not Have To Be Shamed In My Closeness. Family Are The People Who Must Never Make You Feel Ashamed.) (you Are Wrong. Family Are The People Who Must Make You Feel Ashamed When You Are Deserving Of Shame.) (and You Are Deserving Of Shame?) (i Am. I Am Trying To Tell You.) 'we Were Stupid,' He Said, 'because We Believed In Things.' 'why Is This Stupid?' 'because There Are Not Things To Believe In.' (love?) (there Is No Love. Only The End Of Love.) (goodness?) (do Not Be A Fool.) (god?) (if God Exists, He Is Not To Be Believed In.)

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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(you Do Not Have

Jonathan Safran Foer

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(you Do Not Have To Be Shamed In My Closeness. Family Are The People Who Must Never Make You Feel Ashamed.) (you Are Wrong. Family Are The People Who Must Make You Feel Ashamed When You Are Deserving Of Shame.) (and You Are Deserving Of Shame?) (i Am. I Am Trying To Tell You.) 'we Were Stupid,' He Said, 'because We Believed In Things.' 'why Is This Stupid?' 'because There Are Not Things To Believe In.' (love?) (there Is No Love. Only The End Of Love.) (goodness?) (do Not Be A Fool.) (god?) (if God Exists, He Is Not To Be Believed In.)

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Jews Have A Special Relationship To Books, And The Haggadah Has Been Translated More Widely, And Reprinted More Often, Than Any Other Jewish Book. It Is Not A Work Of History Or Philosophy, Not A Prayer Book, User’s Manual, Timeline, Poem Or Palimpsest - And Yet It Is All These Things.

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

You Will Remember When A Bird Crashed Through The Window And Fell To The Floor. You Will Remember, Those Of You Who Were There, How It Jerked Its Wings Before Dying, And Left A Spot Of Blood On The Floor After It Was Removed. But Who Among You Was First To Notice The Negative Bird It Left In The Window? Who First Saw The Shadow That The Bird Left Behind, The Shadow That Drew Blood From Any Finger That Dared To Trace It, The Shadow That Was Better Proof Of The Bird's Existence Than The Bird Ever Was?

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.

Our Love Was The Affliction For Which Only Our Love Was The Cure.

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?

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.

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.

How Would You Judge An Artist Who Mutilated Animals In A Gallery Because It Was Visually Arresting? How Riveting Would The Sound Of A Tortured Animal Need To Be To Make You Want To Hear It That Badly? Try To Imagine Any End Other Than Taste For Which It Would Be Justifiable To Do What We Do To Farmed Animals.

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

You Can Call Your Turkey Organic And Torture It Daily.

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

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.

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.

I Said, 'i Need To Know How He Died.' He Flipped Back And Pointed At, 'why?' So I Can Stop Inventing How He Died. I'm Always Inventing.

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.

Life Is Scarier Than Death.

I Was More Alone Than If I Had Been Alone.

Oh,' She Said. 'i Have Never Seen A Jew Before. Can I See His Horns?

In Truth I Was Manufacturing A Brick Wall Of Shits.

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.

Elsewhere The Paper Notes That Vegetarians And Vegans (including Athletes) 'meet And Exceed Requirements' For Protein. And, To Render The Whole We-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat Idea Even More Useless, Other Data Suggests That Excess Animal Protein Intake Is Linked With Osteoporosis, Kidney Disease, Calcium Stones In The Urinary Tract, And Some Cancers. Despite Some Persistent Confusion, It Is Clear That Vegetarians And Vegans Tend To Have More Optimal Protein Consumption Than Omnivores.

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

I Brought The Birdcages To The Windows. I Opened The Windows, And Opened The Birdcages. I Poured The Fish Down The Drain. I Took The Dogs And Cats Downstairs And Removed Their Collars. I Released The Insects Onto The Street. And The Reptiles. And The Mice. I Told Them, Go. All Of You. Go. And They Went. And They Didn’t Come Back

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

The Factory Farm Has Succeeded By Divorcing People From Their Food, Eliminating Farmers, And Ruling Agriculture By Corporate Fiat.

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

Marriage Is Like A Chess Match Is Initiated And The Board Expands Over Time Until It Takes Up All Of A Life.

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

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.

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

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.

She Is Deranged, But So So Playful.

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Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less.

Everything Is Illuminated

...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.

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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?

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Yesterday I Wanted To Turn Inside Out.

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Sometimes You Have To Put Your Fears In Order.

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Long Distance Relationship

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

Afraid Of Death

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Animal Experimentation

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

Love...is The Immovability Of Truth.

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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.

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

I Would Have Done Anything For Him. Maybe That Was My Sickness.

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

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

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.

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.

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

It Was The First Time I Had Ever Made Love. I Wondered If He Knew That. It Felt Like Crying. I Wondered, Why Does Anyone Ever Make Love?

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.

Isn't It Strange How Upset People Get About A Few Dozen Baseball Players Taking Growth Hormones, When We're Doing What We're Doing To Our Food Animals And Feeding Them To Our Children?

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

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

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

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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?

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.

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

One Of The Greatest Opportunities To Live Our Values-or Betray Them-lies In The Food We Put On Our Plates.

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

Getting To Know Each Other

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.

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

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.

He Promised Us That Everything Would Be Okay. I Was A Child, But I Knew That Everything Would Not Be Okay. That Did Not Make My Father A Liar. It Made Him My Father.

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.

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

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.

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.

Profound, Bottomless Self-doubt - It Has No Value - What's The Point? In A Way, It Takes Up As Much Time As Anything Else.

Her Life Was A Slow Realization That The World Was Not For Her And That For Whatever Reason She Would Never Be Happy And Honest At The Same Time. She Felt As If She Were Brimming Always Producing And Hoarding More Love Inside Her. But There Was No Release. Table Ivory Elephant Charm Rainbow Onion Hairdo Violence Melodrama Honey...none Of It Moved Her. She Addressed The World Honestly Searching For Something Deserving Of The Volumes Of Love She Knew She Had Within Her But To Each She Would Have To Say I Don't Love You.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Try To Live So That You Can Always Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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

Dear Anna, We Will Live In A Home With No Walls, So That Everywhere We Go Will Be Our Home.

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

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

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?

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.

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

Cobblestone Streets

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

I Love You Also Means I Love You More Than Anyone Loves You, Or Has Loved You, Or Will Love You, And Also, I Love You In A Way That No One Loves You, Or Has Loved You, Or Will Love You, And Also, I Love You In A Way That I Love No One Else, And Never Have Loved Anyone Else, And Never Will Love Anyone Else.

(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.)

Well, What I Don't Get Is Why Do We Exist? I Don't Mean How, But Why.' I Watched The Fireflies Of His Thoughts Orbit His Head. He Said, 'we Exist Because We Exist. . .we Could Imagine All Sorts Of Universes Like This One, But This Is The One That Happened.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Second Thoughts

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.

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.

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.

Is There Really Anyone, Besides Rudy Giuliani, Who Prefers The New Times Square?

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.

It Might Sound Naive To Suggest That Whether You Order A Chicken Patty Or A Veggie Burger Is A Profoundly Important Decision. Then Again, It Certainly Would Have Sounded Fantastic If In The 1950's You Were Told That Where You Sat In A Restaurant Or On A Bus Could Begin To Uproot Racism.

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.

[…] 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.

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

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.

You Do Not Have To Utter Anything You Do Not Want To Utter,” I Told Her, And She Said, “then I Would Never Utter Another Word Again.” “you Do Not Have To Do Anything That You Do Not Want To Do.” “then I Would Never Do Anything Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unimportant Things

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

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

I Can Only Hold On To The Things I Want To Lose.

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.

It Is Better To Lose Than Never To Have Had.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Jed Perl Writes Precisely And Ecstatically. Antoine' S Alphabet Is A History And A Fairy Tale, A Work Of Criticism, And A Work Of Art.

...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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

...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.

There Are Still Many Different Ways To Get Stuck, Existentially Stuck. Feeling Like, "this Is Worthless. I'm Wasting My Time, And I Would Be Wasting The Time Of Someone Who Tried To Read This." It Happens All The Time.

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.

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.

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

He Removed Several Pages Of Death Certificates, Which Were Picked Up By Another Breeze And Sent Into The Trees. Some Would Fall With The Leaves That September. Some Would Fall With The Trees Generations Later.

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!

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.

We Were Trying To Make Our Lives Easier, Trying, With All Our Rules, To Make Life Effortless. But A Friction Began To Arise Between Nothing And Something, In The Morning The Nothing Vase Cast A Something Shadow, Like The Memory Of Someone You've Lost, What Can You Say About That, At Night The Nothing Light Spilled From The Guest Room Spilled Under The Nothing Door And Stained The Something Hallway, There's Nothing To Say.

Food Serves Two Parallel Purposes: It Nourishes And It Helps You Remember. Eating And Storytelling Are Inseparable-the Saltwater Is Also Tears; The Honey Not Only Tastes Sweet, But Makes Us Think Of Sweetness; The Matzo Is The Bread Of Our Affliction.

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

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

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

We Are Being Very Nomadic With The Truth, Yes?

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

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.

What Does It Remember Like?

I Dreamt Four Nights Ago Of Clock Hands Descending From The Universe Like Rain, Of The Moon As A Green Eye, Of Mirrors And Insects, Of A Love That Never Withdrew. It Was Not The Feeling Of Completeness That I So Needed, But The Feeling Of Not Being Empty.

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

Highs And Lows Make You Feel That Things Matter, But They're Nothing." "so What's Something?" "being Reliable Is Something. Being Good.

But I Still Couldn't Figure Out What It All Meant. The More I Found Out, The Less I Understood.

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.

We All Choose Things, And We Also All Choose Against Things. I Want To Be The Kind Of Person Who Chooses For More Than Chooses Against.

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.

This Is My Heart. You Are Touching It With Your Left Hand. You Are Touching It With Your Left Hand, Not Because You Are Left-handed, Although You Might Be, But Because I Am Holding It Against My Heart. What You Are Feeling Is The Beating Of My Heart. It Is What Keeps Me Alive.

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