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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD PEOPLE They never do.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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She told him that she wished there were another commandment, an eleventh etched into the tablets: Do not change.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Feeling pain is still better than not feeling, isn't it?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I had to do it for myself.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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You are very funny Jonathan." "No. That is the last thing I want to be." "Why? To be funny is a great thing." "No it's not." "Why is this?" "I used to thing that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. You know what I mean?" "Yes of course." "But now I think it's the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world." --
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Even if Lady Macbeth could have removed that damn spot, wouldn't her hands have been red from all of the scrubbing?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I' was the last word I was able to speak aloud, which is a terrible thing, but there it is, I would walk around the neighborhood saying, 'I I I I.' 'You want a cup of coffee, Thomas?' 'I.' 'And maybe something sweet?' 'I.' 'How about this weather?' 'I.' 'You look upset. Is anything wrong?' I wanted to say, 'Of course,' I wanted to ask, 'Is anything right?' I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Nie mozemy wystepowac w obronie obojetnosci i ignorancji. Kolejne pokolenia coraz wiecej wiedza o tym, jak wyglada dzialalnosc przemyslu. Zyjemy w czasach, w ktorych krytyczne podejscie do chowu przemyslowego stalo sie czescia zbiorowej swiadomosci. To nas beda pytac: jak zareagowales, gdy dowiedziales sie prawdy o zjadaniu zwierzat.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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the current division of the shtetl into its two sections, the Jewish Quarter and the Human Three-Quarters. All so-called sacred activities--religious studies, kosher butchering, bargaining, etc.--were contained within the Jewish Quarter. Those activities concerned with the humdrum of daily existence--secular studies, communal justice, buying and selling, etc.--took place in the Human Three-Quarters. Straddling the two was the Upright Synago..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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And so was the synagogue lifted and moved. It was in 1783 that wheels were attached, making the shtetl's ever-changing negotiation of Jewishness and Humanness less of a schlep.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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the humble antiques salesman who survived off charity, unable to part with any of his candelabras, figurines, or hourglasses
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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almost all of the shtetl's three hundred-odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this. A month before there had been the question of whether it might send a better message to the children to plug, finally, the bagel's hole.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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and making her happy is another one of my raisons d'etre.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Brod's life was a slow realisation that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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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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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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And she was in love.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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How, after all, can one miss something one has never known?
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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This is milk that I am feeding you. It comes from Mordechai the milkman, whom you will meet one day. He gets the milk from a cow, which is a very strange and troubling thing if you think about it, so don't think about it . . . This is my hand that is petting your face. Some people are left-handed and some are right-handed. We don't know which you are yet, because you just sit there and let me do the handling . . . This is a kiss. It is what..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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778e0c9
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From the unemployed Sloucher Lumpl W, who reclined on Passover not because it was religious custom but because why should that night be different from all others?: I'm not the greatest person that ever lived, but I would be a good father, and you know it.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own,
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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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, which were only good enough.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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The Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, and the Jews have four hundred for schmuck.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I do not think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering,
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Shame is the work of memory against forgetting. Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely -- yet not entirely -- forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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there are only so many times that you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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What do you think is going on?' 'I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my out-sides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Prob..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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The Upright congregants looked down on the Slouchers, who seemed willing to sacrifice any Jewish law for the sake of what they feebly termed the great and necessary reconciliation of religion with life. The Uprighters called them names and promised them an eternity of agony in the next world for their eagerness to be comfortable in this one.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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You are a schmuck," I informed the hero. "You're not using the word correctly," he said. "Yes I am," I said."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Brod was afraid any tears of her own would cause the walls of the old house to give way, so she sandbagged them behind her eyes, exiled them to someplace deeper, safer.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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GLI EBREI HANNO SEI SENSI Tatto, gusto, vista, odorato, udito... memoria. Mentre i gentili fanno esperienza del mondo mediante i sensi tradizionali e usano la memoria solo come strumento di second'ordine per interpretare i fatti, per gli ebrei la memoria non e meno primaria della puntura di uno spillo, o del suo argenteo luccichio, o del gusto del sangue che sprigiona il dito. L'ebreo e punto da uno spillo e ricorda altri spilli. E' solo ri..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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It was the part when you said that you do not know anybody, and how that encompasses even you.
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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La casa dove tua bis-bis-bisnonna e io andammo a stare appena sposati dava sulle cascatelle [...] Aveva pavimenti di legno e finestre magnifiche e spazio sufficiente per una famiglia numerosa. Era una bella casa. Una buona casa. Ma l'acqua... diceva la tua bis-bis-bisnonna ... non riesco a sentirmi quando penso. Tempo, io la incalzavo. Datti tempo. E, lascia che te lo dica: anche se la casa era spaventosamente umida, e il prato davanti una ..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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What I hate is when consumers act as if farmers want these things, when it's consumers who tell farmers what to grow. They've wanted cheap food. We've grown it. If they want cage-free eggs, they have to pay a lot more money for them. Period. It's cheaper to produce an egg in a massive laying barn with caged hens. It's more efficient and that means it's more sustainable. Yes, I'm saying that factory farming can be more sustainable, though I ..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Different studies suggest different dietary changes in response to climate change, but the ballpark is pretty clear. The most comprehensive assessment of the livestock industry's environmental impact was published in Nature in October 2018. After analyzing food-production systems from every country around the world, the authors concluded that while undernourished people living in poverty across the globe could actually eat a little more mea..
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I used to tuck her ... but now she tucked my feelings into the woven arteries of my veins."
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into. (p. 71)
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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I hope you never love anything as much as I love you. (p. 73)
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living. (p. 113)
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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There is nothing wrong with compromising, even if you are compromising almost everything. (p. 175)
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Jonathan Safran Foer |