Quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

“Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, hab...”

“She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.”

“Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?”

“Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would ...”

“And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary.”

“Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 per...”

“Being reliable is something. Being good.”

“Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.”

“There are only so many times that you can utter It does not hurt before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certai...”

“There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.”

“He looked so much like me, I could tell that he saw it, too, we shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? DO we all make the same mistakes, or has one o...”

“she also liked to remember that there could be no such thing as an intentional imperfection. People are always mistaking something that looks good for something that feels good.”

“I once went to report on a village in Russia, a community of artists who were forced to flee the cities! I'd heard that paintings hung everywhere! I heard you couldn't see the walls through all of ...”

“To feel alone is to be alone.”

“In my dream, people apologized for things that were about to happen, and lit candles by inhaling.”

“Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "I can't remember. Which?" "Do you know what those words mean?" "Not really." "An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical." "I'm a...”

“I got tired, I told him. Not worn out, but worn through. Like one of those wives who wakes up one morning and says I can't bake any more bread.You never bake bread, he wrote, and we were still joki...”

“I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?”

“One can build a perfect home, but not live in it.”

“It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be il...”