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

We've made science experiments of ourselves and our children.

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

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

Eating a piece of meat, at its most efficient, we could say is like throwing away six times that amount of food every time you eat it because you're recycling all those calories through it. I know a lot of people who came to this issue not through animal welfare but through wastefulness.

She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.