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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.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Adult Cry Deserve Development Function Home Ourselves People World
It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Lonely Myself People Start Wonder
I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Excellence Life Limitation Thinking
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.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Heart Intimate Myself Often Present Rich Save Technology Time
The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It’s already happening.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Factory People Reality See Willing
One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Day Family Hate Love Oneself Yourself
You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Person Understand Whisper Yourself
Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable-the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Food Help Honey Nourish Ourselves Purpose Remember Serve Tears
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

Different Myself Reading Wasted Time Way Worth
The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Death Mistake Myself
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Day Oneself Start Worst
Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Children Feed Myself Worth
We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Feeling Important Love Romance Talk Togetherness
She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Beginning Fall In Love Herself Ordinary Time
Of course food has an important cultural use in families, but there are things that have more important cultural uses in families, and broadening the conversation out simply from what’s reasonable also allows in other things.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Allow Conversation Culture Family Food Important Reason Simplicity
When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Life Love Necessary Possible Yourself
She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee’s knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Born Color Different Herself
I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Breathe Father Process Tree Understand Young
It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hard Live Person Place Travel
What does it remember like?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

One Liner Remember
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Each Other Talk Way Word
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Animal Cat Dog Farm Illegal Practice Treat Way
I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, becuase I did. It’s that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don’t know how I could have tried harder.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Hard Key Myself Trust Try
I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Children Myself Need Past
Part 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 FOER

Aware Direction Life Live Miss Move Oneself Opportunity
Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Laughter Myself Room Small
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Creature Live Love Memories Reminder Story World

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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