In the past seven years of love-making he had heard the words "I love you" so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers, and adulterous wives. Women said "I love you" without his ever speaking. "The more you love someone," he came to think, "the harder it is to tell them." It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say "I love you".
Jonathan Safran FoerShe 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.
Jonathan Safran FoerHowever much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sense of the word. And we know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power. Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless--it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another.
Jonathan Safran FoerThe dissolution of a family, global crisis creates the massive fracture, not only in the Middle East but between America and Israel, between Europe and Israel, between American Jews and Israeli Jews. The distances seem to be widening wherever you look.
Jonathan Safran FoerIf the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
Jonathan Safran FoerI 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 Foer