Jonathan Safran Foer quotes - page 10

Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity. (Jonathan Safran Foer)
Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness? View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Is there really anyone, besides Rudy Giuliani, who prefers the new Times Square? View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
We eat as sons and daughters, as families, as communities, as generations, as nations, and increasingly as a globe. We can't stop our eating from radiating influence even if we want to. (Jonathan Safran Foer)
It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
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. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
I'm interested in the kind of religion that makes life harder. I'm not so interested in the comforting kind of religion. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It's already happening. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention. (Jonathan Safran Foer)
Look, taste is clearly the crudest of our senses: this is scientifically, objectively factual. It is less nuanced. Eyesight is extraordinary - hearing, touch. I find people who devote their whole lives to taste a little strange. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
I want to talk about God in a literary way. But I think I would have a very hard time praying to God. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. View quote
Jonathan Safran Foer