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Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

Jonathan Safran Foer

I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Difference Emotion Feeling Shame Shy Yourself
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Equality Fingers Respond Responsibility Throw Yourself
Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Change Expose Live Respond Silence
I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Beginning Deserve Detail Friendship Leaving Myself Relationship Talk Yourself
We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Feeling Important Love Romance Talk Togetherness
There are still many different ways to get stuck, existentially stuck. Feeling like, “This is worthless. I’m wasting my time, and I would be wasting the time of someone who tried to read this.” It happens all the time.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Different Myself Reading Wasted Time Way Worth
I’d rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Different Hate Myself
This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Absence Hate Himself Love Presence
You can call your turkey organic and torture it daily.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Call Organic Yourself
If I’d been someone else in a different world I’d’ve done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Different Myself Silence World
Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Appearance Himself Night Sleep Steal
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Cat Dog Farm Illegal Practice Treat Way
We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Admit Effort Goal Human Open Romance Temporary Time Volume
We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Believe Cook God
Let love write on you for awhile.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Love Sex Writing Yourself
I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Arrangement Myself Question World

Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

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Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

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Popular Authors

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