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6819c9b
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It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f65582b
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I decided then and there never to become someone who told jokes when explanations were impossible.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a16fa1f
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It [the trip] captured five very long hours. If you want to know why, it is because Grandfather is Grandfather first and a driver second. He made us lost often and became on his nerves. I had to translate his anger into useful information for the hero. "Fuck," Grandfather said. I said, "He says that if you look at the statues, you can see that some no longer endure. Those are where Communist statues used to be." "Fucking fuck, fuck!" Grandf..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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af1adb5
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I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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22cf2de
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Being reliable is something. Being good.
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reliable
something
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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ef74c55
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He wrote, You're being crazy. You're going to catch a cold. I already have a cold. You are going to catch a colder. I could not believe he was making a joke. And I could not believe I laughed.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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815bffc
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What about guns with sensors in the handles that could detect if you were angry, and if you were, they wouldn't fire, even if you were a police officer? What about skyscrapers made with moving parts, so they could rearrange themselves when they had to, and even open holes in their middles for planes to fly through?
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planes
skyscrapers
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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09f1f99
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Don't you find that strange? I can't believe I never found it strange before. It's like your name, how you don't notice it for so long, but when you finally do, you can't help but say it over and over, and wonder why you never thought it was strange that you should have that name, and that everyone has been calling you that name for you whole life.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a552068
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When you hide your face from the world, you can't see the world.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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284e499
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People are always mistaking something that looks good for something that feels good.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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4fe2f65
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Everyone has a pipeline through which he pushes what he is willing and able to share of himself out into the world, and through which he takes in all of the world that he is willing and able to bear. Max's conduit wasn't bigger than anyone else's, it was simply unclogged. What
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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587a1d3
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Should he one day share it and be asked how autobiographical it was, he would say, "It's not my life, but it's me."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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52f7ff0
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The absurdity of it, the agony and beauty of it, almost brought Jacob to his knees: these two independent consciousnesses, neither of which existed ten and a half years ago, and existed only because of him, could now not only operate free of him (that much he'd known for a long time), but demand freedom.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a679d87
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and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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42a423c
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Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless - it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.
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factory-farming
vegetarian
nonfiction
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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20b644e
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There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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698c7cb
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Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "I can't remember. Which?" "Do you know what those words mean?" "Not really." "An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical." "I'm an optimist." "Well, that's good, because there's no irrefutable evidence. There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f252dde
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It's an empowering idea. The entire goliath of the food industry is driven and determined by the choices we make as the waiter gets impatient for our order or in the practicalities ad whimsies of what we load into our shopping carts or farmers'-market bags.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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15ad6a9
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Each case of food-borne illness cannot be traced, but where we do know the original, or the "vehicle of transmission," it is, overwhelmingly, an animal product. According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), poultry is by far the largest cause... 83 percent of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase... The next time a friend has... "t..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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4f5cca4
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There are more places you haven't heard of then you're heard of!' I loved that
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travel
world
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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7e9bf01
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My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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32351a7
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I have made efforts to make you appear as a person with less anxiety, as you have commanded me to do on so many occasions. This is difficult to achieve, because in truth you are a person with very much anxiety. Perhaps you should be a drug user.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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386a700
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They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge and I will show you things you have never, ever seen. The "M" was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the "eet" from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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ef280cc
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She asked: "What can you promise?" He promised: "Things are about to be different." --
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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a584382
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I did not feel that he owed it to me. And I did not feel like I owed it to him. We owed it to each other, which is something different.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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978ea62
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It's just that sometimes we make things up just to talk
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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b82ecc3
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But the future lay open, a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities with a small quick heartbeat, delicate and impatient
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inspirational
pages-63-64
poetic
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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bd6bbdb
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There was nothing, which would have been unfortunate, unless nothing was a clue. Was nothing a clue?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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f9dd4c2
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I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life [...]
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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5d4ad87
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So She had to satisfy herself with the idea of love-loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for.
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hope
love
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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bf9d885
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Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we have traveled, just as the dead can never be counted.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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7325c7e
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It's very hard to have a productive dialogue with a thirteen-year-old boy, as every gently broached subject becomes an Ultimate Conversation, requiring defense systems and counterattacks to attacks that were never launched. What begins as an innocent observation about his habit of leaving things in the pockets of dirty clothes ends with Sam blaming his parents for his twenty-eighth-percentile height, which makes him want to commit suicide o..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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b40f01a
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I don't know how late it got. I probably fell asleep, but I don't remember. I cried so much that everything blurred into everything else. At some point she was carrying me to my room. Then I was in bed. She was looking over me. I don't believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. But it was also incredibly simple. In my only life, she was my mom, a..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e264618
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So many days in their shared life. So many experiences. How had they managed to spend the previous sixteen years unlearning each other?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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0b11b2b
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Why are entire flocks of industrial birds dying at once? And what about the people eating those birds? Just the other day, one of the local pediatricians was telling me he's seeing all kinds of illnesses that he never used to see. Not only juvenile diabetes, but inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that a lot of the docs don't even know what to call. And girls are going through puberty much earlier; and kids are allergic to just about every..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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17ebff5
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There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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7eeac2b
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He was caught somewhere between his mother's last kiss and the first kiss he would give his child, between the war that was and would be
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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458e6c2
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I can't even say 'hair pie,'' I told him, 'unless I'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits....
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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2dcb817
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One day I wandered away from her and hid. I liked the way it felt to have someone look for me, to hear my name again and again. "Oskar! Oskar!" Maybe I didn't even like it, but I needed it right then."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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ee0b0fe
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Sea horses have complicated routines for courtship, and tend to mate under full moons, making musical sounds while doing so.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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8574ce4
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I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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421d5d9
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He knew that I love you also means I love you more than anyone else loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one else loves your, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. He knew that it is, by love's definition, impossible to love two people.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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e27cf3d
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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. 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,..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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9dd578c
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I wanted to shout myself into his ear.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |