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" People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Book

People

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" 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. "

" People don't care enough. They don't get worked up enough. They don't get angry enough. They don't get passionate enough. I'd rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it. "

" We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take. "

" When we talk about protecting our right to have guns, we are talking about protecting our right to shoot bullets. So what is it that's so important to shoot at? "

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation. "

" 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. "

" I have made my own choice, which is vegetarianism, but it's not the choice I'm imposing on anybody else. "

" 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. "

" When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. "

" It's possible to make things that aren't just money-makers. Something wonderful for its own sake. "

" 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. "

" Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting. "

" I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain. "

" I know lots and lots and lots of vegetarians who think it's perfectly all right to kill animals for food to eat, but don't do it because they think all the ways in which it's done are wrong. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention. "