“While it is always possible to wake a person who’s sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.”

Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.

She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?

I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.

Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.

I wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.

It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can’t people say what they mean at the time?

I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.

Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore — “I’m easy; I’ll eat anything” — can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.

He couldn’t bear to live, but he couldn’t bear to die. He couldn’t bear the thought of he making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn’t bear to keep it, but he couldn’t bear to destroy it either.

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.

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us…on the inside, looking out.

Isn’t it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we’re doing what we’re doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?

She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.

I heard that when I had grown up and had no idea of the whole story because the family album had pictures of a covered carriage and my mother smiling so I assumed I was asleep.

My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.

What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep.

My legs are falling asleep, i blurted. It wasnt a total lie. I was experiencing tingling sensations all through my body, legs included. I could solve that. Patchs hands closed on my hips.

You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.

So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.

All humans are dead except those who have knowledge; and all those who have knowledge are asleep, except those who do good deeds.