I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.
Jonathan Safran FoerEvery factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
Jonathan Safran FoerI wasnโt trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didnโt 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.
Jonathan Safran FoerHumans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.
Jonathan Safran FoerIt made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about โEleanor Rigby.โ Itโs true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?
Jonathan Safran FoerWhen I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.
Jonathan Safran FoerIf there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
Jonathan Safran Foer