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 FOERThe philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that “beauty always takes place in the particular.” Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.
More Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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Art can be very political but that can’t be the purpose of art, it can’t be the driving force. It isn’t with any of the books that I love, anyway.
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She said, “Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don’t need?” I said, “It depends on what it means to need.
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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.
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The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!
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If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
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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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Everything else happened – why not the things that could have?
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So 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!
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I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.
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I wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.
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You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
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Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.
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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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She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.
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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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