Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

287 Sourced Quotes

When you look up 'hilarious' in the dictionary, there's a picture of you.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it

Jonathan Safran Foer
She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

Jonathan Safran Foer
That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Stories about food are stories about us-our history and our values.

Jonathan Safran Foer
And the general shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.' If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable-the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.

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

Jonathan Safran Foer
I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.

Jonathan Safran Foer
We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against...

Jonathan Safran Foer
Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?

Jonathan Safran Foer
When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.

Jonathan Safran Foer
What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through a little speaker...I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time.

Jonathan Safran Foer