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 FOERNot 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 FOEREvery 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 FOERShe was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERPart of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOEREverything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERChoosing 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERWe had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERWe 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERWorthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERSo many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERIt is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERThe more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It’s already happening.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERYou do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter,” I told her, and she said, “Then I would never utter another word again.” “You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.” “Then I would never do anything again.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERIt 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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER