It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.

It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)

The world is a big place," he said, "but so is the inside of an apartment!

Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.