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" As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Attention
Words
Pay Attention
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" Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. "
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" 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. "
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" 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? "
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" How could this world be so unlike the world that I believed I was living in? I can't describe it. Do I not want to describe it, or do I simply not possess the vocabulary? "
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" 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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" Why wouldn't - how couldn't - an author care about how his or her books look? "
Jonathan Safran Foer
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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. "
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" I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Choices
Time
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" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Stop
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Even
" The best books are the ones that ask the most questions. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Most
Ask
Best
" 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 able we will be to follow our best instincts. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Best
History
Family
" I have made my own choice, which is vegetarianism, but it's not the choice I'm imposing on anybody else. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
My Own
Own
Else
" What the world does not need is a Haggadah that pats itself on the back. It needs a Haggadah that gets out of the way, that starts a conversation and gets out of the way. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Conversation
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Way
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Animals
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" It's possible to make things that aren't just money-makers. Something wonderful for its own sake. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
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" 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
Your
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See
" We've made science experiments of ourselves and our children. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Experiments
Children
Made
" The kind of funny irony is that a lot of people talk about ethical meat eating as if it's a way to care about things, but also not to alienate yourself from the rest of the world. But it's so much more alienating than vegetarianism. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Yourself
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World
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Cows
Who
Sometimes
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
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" There's no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with. "
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Something
Wrong
Seeing
" 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. "
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Wife
" My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration. "
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Kind
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" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Evil
Good
Words
" I need an office, so I can have a place where I don't write. "
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Write
I Can
Need
" 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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Kind
Religion
Makes
" When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. "
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" Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing. "
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Like
" Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity. "
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Craving
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Identity
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
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Work