Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Jonathan Safran Foer More Quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer More Quotes From Jonathan Safran Foer And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. Jonathan Safran Foer hypocrisy parent children Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across. Jonathan Safran Foer feet animal might Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can’t we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our dinner plates — or for that matter, the KFC in our hands? Jonathan Safran Foer stupid animal thinking Chickens can do many things, but they cannot make sophisticated deals with humans. Jonathan Safran Foer sophisticated deals chickens Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls! Jonathan Safran Foer skulls play people Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case. Jonathan Safran Foer writing animal book But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me. Jonathan Safran Foer philosophy years thinking I need an office, so I can have a place where I don't write. Jonathan Safran Foer office writing needs I made up my mind that nothing,, nothing was going to stop me Not even me. Jonathan Safran Foer made mind She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes Jonathan Safran Foer melancholy cry eye The UN special envoy on food called it a 'crime against humanity' to funnel 100 million tons of grain and corn to ethanol when almost a billion people are starving. So what kind of crime is animal agriculture, which uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion human who are living in dire poverty? Jonathan Safran Foer agriculture animal years It is my great hope that our paths, however long and winding, will cross again. Jonathan Safran Foer crosses path long As long as I am thinking, I am alive. Jonathan Safran Foer alive long thinking I can only hold on to the things I want to lose. Jonathan Safran Foer loses i-can want This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? Jonathan Safran Foer crazy strong animal I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own. Jonathan Safran Foer standards trying people I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep. Jonathan Safran Foer names people thinking I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness. Jonathan Safran Foer sickness done I said I kicked a French chicken in the stomach once." "Huh?" "It said, 'Oeuf.'" "What is that?" "It's a joke. Do you want to hear another, or have you already had un oeuf? Jonathan Safran Foer chickens want said It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950's you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. Jonathan Safran Foer decision racism order
