Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals.

Not making a decision —eating "like everyone else" —is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic. Without question, in most places and in most times, to decide one's diet by not deciding —to eat like everyone else —was probably a fine idea.

One study found that roughly 4.5 million sea animals are killed as bycatch in longline fishing every year.

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity. For some, that irrationality leads to a kind of resignation. Food

The Thanksgiving turkey is the flesh of competing instincts —of remembering and forgetting.

270,000 more people become hungry each day).

Mark had said it wasn't too late in life for happiness. When, in Julia's life, would it be late enough for honesty? It was amazing how little changed as everything changed. The conversation was continually expanding, but it was no longer clear what they were talking about.

No podemos alegar ignorancia, solo indiferencia. Los que vivimos hoy sabemos más. Tenemos la oportunidad y la responsabilidad que nos da vivir en un momento en que la crítica hacia las granjas industriales ha llegado a la conciencia pública. Somos aquellos a quienes se nos preguntará, con toda la justicia del mundo: ¿Qué hiciste cuando te enteraste de lo que implica comer animales?

No, no. Absolutely not. We had a talk with the rabbi, and now we're fully in salvage-the-bar-mitzvah mode." "You had a talk? You think talk got us out of Egypt or Entebbe? Uh-uh. Plagues and Uzis. Talk gets you a good place in line for a shower that isn't a shower.

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it.

And historians have now discovered an even earlier Thanksgiving than the 1621 Plymouth celebration that English-American historians made famous. Half a century before Plymouth, early American settlers celebrated Thanksgiving with the Timucua Indians in what is now Florida —the best evidence suggests that the settlers were Catholic rather than Protestant, and spoke Spanish rather than English. They dined on bean soup.

And I'll tell you another thing: if consumers don't want to pay the farmer to do it right, they shouldn't eat meat.

The best reason to think that there could be a better future is the fact that we know just how bad the future could be.

The average distance our meat travels hovers around fifteen hundred miles. That's like me driving from Brooklyn to the Texas Panhandle for lunch.

How do you know all that?" "I like knowing things." "Me, too.

Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- I'm easy; I'll eat anything -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list.

We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth of about eating animals?

Wat is er mis met dat verlangen en dat nodig hebben? Niets. En de gapende afstand tussen de plek waar je bent en je oorspronkelijke voorstelling hoeft niet per definitie mislukking in te houden. Teleurstelling hoeft niet teleurstellend te zijn. Het verlangen, het nodig hebben, de afstand, de teleurstelling: groeien, weten, toewijden, naast elkaar oud worden. Je kunt heel goed alleen leven, maar niet een leven lang.

Remembering and forgetting are part of the same mental process. To write down one detail of an event is to not write down another (unless you keep writing forever).

I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

Food matters and animals matter and eating animals matters even more. The question of eating animals is ultimately driven by our intuitions about what it means to reach an ideal we have named, perhaps incorrectly, "being human.

Sofiowka was found the next morning, swinging by the neck from the wooden bridge. His severed hands were hanging from strings tied to his feet, and across his chest was written, in Brod's red lipstick, ANIMAL

Hoewel hij het bijna voortdurend betreurde dat hij zichzelf was, verwarde hij zichzelf nooit met het probleem. De wereld was het probleem. Die paste niet. Maar hoe vaak zou er ooit iemand gelukkiger zijn geworden door het laakbaarheidsrecord van de wereld te verbeteren?

Ik geloof dat je een enorm belang hecht aan geluk - van jezelf en anderen - en ongelukkig zijn zo bedreigend vindt dat je liever met het hele schip naar de kelder gaat dan toegeeft dat er een lek in zit.