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823175c
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Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.
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life
insprinational
food
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e793de2
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Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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6bb7599
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Someone needed to invent a way to be close to people without having to see them, or talk to them on the phone, or write (or read) letters, or e-mails, or texts.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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c6c421d
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Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right -- how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? -- but the birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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9dc2ed3
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I trust that you have a good purpose for your ignorance
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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05163ac
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Only a few months into our marriage, we started marking off areas in the apartment as "Nothing Places," in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist, the first was in the bedroom, by the foot of the bed, we marked it off with red tape on the carpet, and it was just large ..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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524543a
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Later that year, when snow started to hide the front steps, when morning became evening as I sat on the sofa, buried under everything I'd lost, I made a fire and used my laughter for kindling: "Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha!"
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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97375db
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It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and w..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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7e45a19
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She told him of ship voyages she had taken to places he had never heard of, and stories he knew were all untrue, were bad not-truths, even, but he nodded, and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of the story is always an absence and he wanted to live among presences.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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5b78beb
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I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each others as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad...
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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38cca1a
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When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. I'm not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to animals as soon as we had the technological power. Look at what we actually do in the name of "animal welfare" and "humaneness," then decide if you still believe in eating meat."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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fa0d576
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There is noting wrong with not understanding yourself.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a345455
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creating a trail of things i wasn't able to tell you
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a7707b4
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Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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26e0227
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We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe. But I knew that there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, like the turtle that everything e..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e025f5b
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Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can't we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our di..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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83f3007
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I once went to report on a village in Russia, a community of artists who were forced to flee the cities! I'd heard that paintings hung everywhere! I heard you couldn't see the walls through all of the paintings! They'd painted the ceilings, the 82 plates, the windows, the lampshades! Was it an act of rebellion! An act of expression! Were the paintings good, or was that beside the point! I needed to see it for myself, and I needed to tel..
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heaven-and-hell
hell
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f9d241f
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The center of me followed her, but I was left with the shell of me.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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ce9a327
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she cried and cried and cried, there weren't any napkins nearby so I ripped the page from the book - "I don't speak. I'm sorry." - and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara (..)"
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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79bf0b0
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Blessings are just curses that other people envy.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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b98daa8
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The end of suffering does not justify the suffering
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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675f1b2
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She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with the chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It was too big for me and would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler to make it that way. Its size was s..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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802fb92
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Why couldn't she have slid it under the door? he wondered. Why couldn't she have folded it? It looked just like any other note she would leave him, like, Could you try to fix the broken knocker? or I'll be back soon, don't worry. It was so strange to him that such a different kind of note - I had to do it for myself - could look exactly the same: trivial, mundane, nothing. He could have hated her for leaving it there in plain sight, and he ..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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be55b2c
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I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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0d473cf
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I asked her why she was getting so upset about such a small thing. She said, 'It doesn't feel small to me.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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9f57a58
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maybe great books were coiled within him like springs, books that could have separated inside from outside.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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7a9c449
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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.
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family
religion
veganism
vegetarianism
mythology
food
stories
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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6700f83
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I am very simple to enchant.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f677bb4
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I went to the lobby and asked Stan what he knew about the person who lived in 6A. He said 'Never seen anyone go in or come out. Just a lot of deliveries and a lot of trash.' 'Cool'. 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'. I walked back up the steps, this time past our floor and to the sixth. There was a mat in front of the door which ..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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adc4d78
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S]o if the device of the person in the ambulance detected the device of the person he loved the most, or the person who loved him the most, and the person in the ambulance was really badly hurt, and might even die, the ambulance could flash GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f5d2cdf
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Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive and thinking is killing me
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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30a02ec
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What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue. Everyone..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a751e6d
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As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad's last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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39f7030
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About 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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ccb548a
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I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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bc3b616
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She always saw through him, as if he were just another window. She always felt that she knew everything about him that could be known. Not that he was simple, but that he was knowable, like a list of errands, like an encyclopedia.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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132c667
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It was the feeling of not wanting to live in the world, even if it was the only place to live.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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9c0dab5
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Nobody likes war not even those who survive it, not even the winners.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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43e5b18
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There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.
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life
truth
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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db29ead
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I opened the coffin. I was surprised again, although again I shouldn't have been. I was surprised that Dad wasn't there. In my brain I knew he wouldn't be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else. Or maybe I was surprised by incredibly empty it was. I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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4d38aa1
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He wrote, I do not know how to live. I do not know either, but I am trying. I do not know how to try. There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him, so I buried them, and let them hurt me.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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26de7b0
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He asked what was wrong. "It's just that why would you have one for him and not one for my dad?" "What do you mean!" "It isn't fair." "What isn't fair!" "My dad was good. Mohammed Atta was evil." "So!" "So my dad deserves to be in there." "What makes you think it's good to be in here!" "Because it means you're biographically significant." "And why is that good!" "I want to be significant." "Nine out of ten significant people have to do with..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a41ad7d
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Once upon a time, USDA inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about thirty years ago, the poultry industry convinced the USDA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a "cosmetic blemish."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e659c8e
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That's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that the love is there.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |