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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
Want
Even
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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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Two
Way
Marble
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Thought
Long
Never
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Eyes
Coffee
Home
" Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Would
Animal
Ways
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Thinking
Time
Focus
" 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
Good
People
Smart
" Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Books
Slow
Fast
" I've never particularly liked bankers. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Bankers
Liked
Never
" 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
More
Relationship
Work
" I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Out
Need
Always
" When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
You
Some
Been
" 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
Perfect
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Human
Memory
Law
" 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? "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Vocabulary
How
World
" The best books are the ones that ask the most questions. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Most
Ask
Best
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Will
Someone
Steps
" 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
Want
Talk
Way
" Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Literature
Art
Art Forms
" When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Change
You
Meat
" Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Experience
Comfort
Words
" 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
Kind
Book
People
" Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
World
Meat
People
" My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Kind
Only
Me
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Powerful
Limit
Free
" 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? "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Talking
Guns
Important
" 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
Living
Size
Compromise
" There's no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Something
Wrong
Seeing
" When a book remembers, we remember. It reminds you that you have a body. So many of the things we may think of as burdensome are actually the things that make us more human. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Think
You
Book
" In high school I became a vegetarian more times than I can now remember, most often as an effort to claim some identity in a world of people whose identities seemed to come effortlessly. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
School
World
Effort
" 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. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
Family
Time
Reading