Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

It’s a rule that we never listen to sad music, we made that rule early on, songs are as sad as the listener, we hardly ever listen to music.

Ninety-eight percent of all the soy that's raised goes to livestock. So people make fun of vegetarians for being tofu eaters, but no one eats tofu like steak eaters, by a long shot. It's also funny that tofu is held up as what a vegetarian eats. I mean maybe I eat tofu once a month, but other than that, never. All of it, statistically speaking, is going to livestock.

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

Grandfather informs me that is not possible.

Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.

Yesterday I wanted to turn inside out.

It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me.

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

Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?

I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.

Everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.

[She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

People shouldn't be allowed to get married until it's too late to have kids.

When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.

I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.

I'm interested in the kind of religion that makes life harder. I'm not so interested in the comforting kind of religion.

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

I'm deeply curious about Jewish things. I've toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.

I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.

I realized I was on a something island. 'How did I get here,' I wondered, surrounded by Nothing, "and how can I get back?

We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.

We eat as sons and daughters, as families, as communities, as generations, as nations, and increasingly as a globe. We can't stop our eating from radiating influence even if we want to.

What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?

It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?

Cher Marcel, Allô. I am Oskar's mom. I have thought about it a ton, and I have decided that it isn't obvious why Oskar should go to French lessons, so he will no longer be going to go see you on Sundays like he used to. I want to thank you very much for everything you have taught Oskar, particularly the conditional tense, which is weird. Obviously, there's no need to call me when Oskar doesn't come to his lessons, because I already know, because this was my decision. Also, I will keep sending you checks, because you are a nice guy. Votre ami dévouée, Mademoiselle Schell.

I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.

She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.

She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child.

Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!

Nothing is beautiful and true.

How did her life live itself without her.

We cracked up together, which was necessary, because she loved me again.

Maybe I'll try to be more patient with morons.

We spent our lives making livings.

Do you have any coffee?'...'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.

One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second

Factory farming, of course, does not cause all the world's problems, but is is remarkable just how many of them intersect there.

Our relationship to the environment matters, our relationship to animals matters, and our relationship to culture matters.

Farmers since the beginning of time have been feeding the world very successfully without systematically abusing animals or destroying the environment. But we're breeding food that is less safe for us, it tastes much worse than it ever has in history, and it's wreaking havoc on the environment in a way that it never did in history before. All in the interest of it being cheap.

She avoids mirrors, and lifts a powerful telescope to find herself.

I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each others as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad.

Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.

But I dig Negroes. I dig them all the way.