“Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.”

Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.

I never confused what I had with what I was.

Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.

The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!

I was more alone than if I had been alone.

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?

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

I’d rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it.

Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.

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.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster’s paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.

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.

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

I will only do a Hollywood film when there is something special offered to me.

Traveling – it offers you a hundred roads to adventure, and gives your heart wings!

Now people want Brian Williams to resign, but it could have a happy ending. Apparently what he said was such a blatant departure from the truth, today he got an offer from Fox News.

No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.

I don’t know the man I admire more than [Charles Evans] Hughes. If ever I have the chance I shall offer him the Chief Justiceship.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can’t get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

I’m the type of person who, if somebody offers me a free meal, I get excited because you never know where your next free meal is going to come from.

Everyone in Tollywood is so hardworking and professional. If I get an offer, I would definitely take it up.