Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

I don't mind if smiles come at my expense, I'm a small price to pay.

...he was leaving me. I wondered if I should stop him. If I should wrestle him to the ground and force him to love me. I wanted to hold his shoulders down and shout into his face.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals. Can we tell a new story?

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?