Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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I am an on-and-off vegetarian. Sometimes on, mostly off. I think it is better to be a vegetarian but occasionally, the call of the hot dog overpowers my ethics.
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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.
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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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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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If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
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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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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.
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It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people.
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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.
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I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.
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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.
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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.
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The purpose of the Seder to my mind is to inspire conversations with your family about the human drama and hopefully transmit values to the next generation. I've always felt like this could be better.
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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 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.
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Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.
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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.
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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.
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These little daily choices that we're so used to thinking are irrelevant are the most important thing we do all day long.
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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.
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Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud.
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When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself.
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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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There is no greater gift than time.