Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOERMy wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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Sometimes you have to put your fears in order.
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I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.
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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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She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.
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I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
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We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.
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Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.
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Let love write on you for awhile.
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No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I’ll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse.
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Every 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.
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There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.
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I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.
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I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all.
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Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
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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