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" 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. "

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" I think there's going to be something that happens now, where books move in two directions, one toward digitized formats and one toward remembering what's nice about the physicality of them. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

Two

Move

Nice

" That's the nice thing about being a vegetarian. You don't have to be neurotic. Selective omnivores have to be neurotic. Personally, I don't have time for all that; I don't want to get into it. "

" Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't. "

" It's not worth getting too excited about thinking about the larger picture. The larger picture doesn't come into focus for an awfully long time. "

" 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. "

" Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us. "

" 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. "

" There is no greater gift than time. "

" You write to please yourself, you write to move yourself, to engage yourself in the asking of questions that are important to you. "

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

" 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'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things. "

" 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? "

" When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself. "

" I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

Think

Wife

" 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. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

Disappointment

Funny

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something. "

" Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. "

" I will never come around to the idea of an anthropomorphic God. I'm also uncomfortable with the word 'God'... I'm agnostic about the answer and I'm agnostic about the question. "

" 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. "

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

" Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car. "

" Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

Children

Matters

" Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly. "

" All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them. "

" Why wouldn't - how couldn't - an author care about how his or her books look? "

" To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

Remember

Lose

" Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now. "