Authors:

Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Art Bones Challenges Children Choices Coffee Compromise Culture Dad Darkness Eating Eating Animals Empathy End Of The World Evil Farming Feelings Giving Goodbye Growing Old Happiness Hate Heart Home Hunting Hurt Identity Joy Killing Kissing Language Laughter Leaving Life Love Lying Making Love Memories Mom Morning Opportunity Past Personality Reality Regret Running Sad Sadness School Shame Sleep Son Suffering Today Tragedy Understanding Universe Values Vegetarian Waiting Wall War Water Wife Writing
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

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Animal, Needs, Able
"A New Way To Talk About Eating Animals". Interview with Jeff Glor, www.cbsnews.com. November 3, 2009.

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Party, Tables, Size

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Children, Book, Hero

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
People, Looks, Littles

I made up my mind that nothing,, nothing was going to stop me Not even me.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Mind, Made

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Pain, Real, Sleep
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

These little daily choices that we're so used to thinking are irrelevant are the most important thing we do all day long.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Thinking, Long, Choices

Is there really anyone, besides Rudy Giuliani, who prefers the new Times Square?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Squares, Rudy, Times Square

I'm interested in the kind of religion that makes life harder. I'm not so interested in the comforting kind of religion.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Comforting, Kind, Harder

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Writing, Space, Bars
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.176, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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!

Jonathan Safran Foer
Mom, New York, Dad
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.169, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Cruelty...prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Silly, Animal, Hunting

I want to talk about God in a literary way. But I think I would have a very hard time praying to God.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Hard Times, Thinking, Want
Interview with Joshua Wolf Shenk, www.motherjones.com. May 2005.

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?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Lonely, People, Wonder
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.163, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Thumbs, Mouths, Seems

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to shout myself into his ear.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Ears, Wanted
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Happenings
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.312, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Firsts, Made, Loud
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I wanted so much to have a life. Even just once, even for a second.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Wanted

However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sense of the word. And we know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power. Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless--it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Voiceless, Tests, Matter

Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Silly, Meals, Kind

Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!

Jonathan Safran Foer
War, People, Nine
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I am willing to be annoying if that's what was necessary.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Annoying, Willing, Ifs
Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.90, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It's rarely talked about, but hunting for sport is just about as vile as we humans get.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Sports, Hunting, Humans

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?

Jonathan Safran Foer
Baseball, Children, Animal
"Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, November 2, 2009.

You May Also Like: