Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

Smithfield spilled more than 20 million gallons of lagoon waste into the New River in North Carolina. The spill remains the largest environmental disaster of its kind and is twice as big as the iconic Exxon Valdez 6 years earlier... at the time of the spill, Smithfield was the 7th largest pork producer in the US; two years later it was the biggest.

In zijn eentje doodt Smithfield (Amerika's grootste producent van varkensvlees) jaarlijks meer varkens dan het gezamelijke inwonertal van New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Forth Worth en Memphis - ongeveer 31 miljoen dieren.

Man kann auch die Waldbrandgefahr mindern, indem man sämtliche Bäume fällt.

He leaned down and whispered, 'Haunted.' I whispered back, 'I don't believe in the paranormal.' He said, 'Ghosts don't care if you believe in them'.

Comer animales, como el aborto, es uno de esos temas en los que es imposible saber de manera definitiva algunos de los detalles mas importantes. (¿Cuándo es un feto una persona real y no potencial? ¿Cómo es en verdad la experiencia animal?), lo cual remueve las desazones más profundas de uno y a menudo provoca actitudes defensivas o agresivas.

Muchos científicos predicen la debacle total de todas las especies de peces en menos de cincuenta años, mientras se realizan intensos esfuerzos por atrapar, matar y comer más animales marinos

I yearned to press my ear to the door so that I could at minimum hear. But I knew that my side was on the outside with the hero. Part of me hated this, and part of me was grateful, because once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.

The apartment had never been darker. I turned on the lamp. It became bright around us. The apartment became darker.

like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone

He slid out drawers from the cabinet and pulled cards from the drawers, one after another. 'Henry Kissinger: war!''' 'Ornette Coleman: music!' 'Che Guevara: war!' 'Jeff Bezos: money!' 'Philip Guston: art!' 'Mahatma Gandhi: war!' 'But he was a pacifist', I said. 'Right! War!

Yankel's lipstick autobiography came flaking off his bedroom ceiling, falling gently like blood-stained snow to his bed and floor. You are Yankel. You love Brod. You are a Sloucher. You were once married, but she left you. You don't believe in an afterlife.

In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls!

The arm was the arm, and it was the arm - not her husband, or even herself - that she thought about seven years later, on June 28, 1941, as the first German war blasts shook her wooden house to its foundations, and her eyes rolled back in her head to view, before dying, her insides.

The inside of life became far smaller than the outside, creating a cavity, an emptiness.

But I do not do these things because we are a family. I do them because they are common decencies. That is an idiom that the hero taught me. I do them because I am not a big fucking asshole.

Nos llevamos el cachorro a casa. Lo (la) abracé desde el otro lado de la habitación. Luego, como ella no me dio ningún motivo para pensar que perdería algún dedo en el proceso, dejé que comiera de mi mano. Después le dejé que la lamiera. Y que me lamiera la cara. Y después lamí yo la suya. Y ahora me encantan todos los perros y somos felices para siempre.

that night was the first time your mother and I made love since I returned, and the last time we ever made love, it didn't feel like the last time, I'd kissed Anna for the last time, seen my parents for the last time, spoken for the last time, why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was my last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future

The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued.

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

Would I jump or would I burn? I guess I would jump, because then I wouldn't have to feel pain. On the other hand, maybe I would burn, because then I'd at least have a chance to somehow escape, and even if I couldn't, feeling pain is still better than not feeling, isn't it?

He had a birthmark on the third toe of his left foot. He wasn't able to urinate if someone could hear him. He thought cucumbers were good enough, but pickles were delicious—so absolutely delicious, in fact, that he questioned whether they were, indeed, made from cucumbers, which were only good enough.

aber wenn wir uns die Mühe machen und uns umsehen, können wir nicht leugnen, dass wir mit unseren täglichen Entscheidungen die Welt gestalten.

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently. I would change my life. I would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me. I would jump with Mary on the bed, even if I made a fool of myself. I would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them.

Oskar: I'm God! Thomas: You're an atheist. Oskar: I don't exist!