Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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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'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.
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The best books are the ones that ask the most questions.
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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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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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There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.
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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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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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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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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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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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The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.
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It's rarely talked about, but hunting for sport is just about as vile as we humans get.
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I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.
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As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.
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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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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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Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud.
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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself.