Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think."

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away (from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves) or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something

We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.

These little daily choices that we're so used to thinking are irrelevant are the most important thing we do all day long.

Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.

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