Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
-
If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
-
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
-
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.
-
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.
-
People who care about animals tend to care about people. They don't care about animals to the exclusion of people. Caring is not a finite resource and, even more than that, it's like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
-
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.
-
To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.
-
I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.
-
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.
-
Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.
-
It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is no greater gift than time.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I want to talk about God in a literary way. But I think I would have a very hard time praying to God.
-
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.
-
These little daily choices that we're so used to thinking are irrelevant are the most important thing we do all day long.