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" 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

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" 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. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

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

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" 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

" If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

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

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" 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

" Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" There is an overabundance of rational reasons to say no to factory-farmed meat: It is the No. 1 cause of global warming, it systematically forces tens of billions of animals to suffer in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs, it is a decisive factor in the development of swine and avian flus, and so on. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It's already happening. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Jonathan Safran Foer

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

Jonathan Safran Foer

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Jonathan Safran Foer