Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

It is my great hope that our paths, however long and winding, will cross again.

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

It's rarely talked about, but hunting for sport is just about as vile as we humans get.

Hunting will never feed lots of people; it will always be a hobby.

It takes life to live life

You write to please yourself, you write to move yourself, to engage yourself in the asking of questions that are important to you.

When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself.

It's much easier to be cruel than one might think.

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We've never claimed more, and we've never had less.

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.

Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.

I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.

People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.

Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit.

To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

We've made science experiments of ourselves and our children.

How did her life live itself without her.

It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

When we talk about protecting our right to have guns, we are talking about protecting our right to shoot bullets. So what is it that's so important to shoot at?