Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERWe are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don’t care if we’re lying. I am a bad person. I don’t care. I don’t care what you are.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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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.
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Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
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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.
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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.
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The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.
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With writing, we have second chances.
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Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.
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But I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.
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Let love write on you for awhile.
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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.
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As long as I am thinking, I am alive.
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Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
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Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.
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I was of the opinion that the past is past, and like all that is not now it should remain buried along the side of our memories.
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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