Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERI 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.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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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.
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Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.
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This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.
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The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!
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Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.
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As long as I am thinking, I am alive.
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Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?
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You 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.
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I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
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I was more alone than if I had been alone.
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I try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember,
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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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER -
Most of the times that I think about my relationship to Judaism, I not only accuse myself of a shallowness, but I feel certain that there’s a shallowness there. That’s not a bad thing, really.
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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.
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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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER