Quotes from Jonathan Safran Foer

People who care about animals tend to care about people. They don't care about animals to the exclusion of people. Caring is not a finite resource and, even more than that, it's like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

That's the nice thing about being a vegetarian. You don't have to be neurotic. Selective omnivores have to be neurotic. Personally, I don't have time for all that; I don't want to get into it.

When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.

I am an on-and-off vegetarian. Sometimes on, mostly off. I think it is better to be a vegetarian but occasionally, the call of the hot dog overpowers my ethics.

Jed Perl writes precisely and ecstatically. Antoine' s Alphabet is a history and a fairy tale, a work of criticism, and a work of art.

I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.

Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It's almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.

Why wouldn't - how couldn't - an author care about how his or her books look?

It's not worth getting too excited about thinking about the larger picture. The larger picture doesn't come into focus for an awfully long time.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations.

Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.

There's never been a culture that wasn't obsessed with food. The sort of sad thing is that our obsession is no longer with food, but with the price of food.

I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.