Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleThinkingWayKnowsWorldAnimalWantMadeWriting

Famous Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

“And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers.”

KnowsWantNeedsChildrenWholeStoriesFacesParentAnswersInspireShameOur ChildrenHypocrisyParadoxYour FaceParenthoodExposedBeing A ParentParent Child
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“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 dinner plates — or for that matter, the KFC in our hands?”

PeopleIfsThinkingEndsMatterStoriesHandsNamesAnimalStupidDivineFoolOffersBirdNotionDinnerGuidanceChickensAdamPlatesContinuingTurkeysStupid PeopleSauceCowardlyRibsBarbecueCategorizationDivine GuidanceKfcBarbecue SauceDinner Plates
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“Almost always when I told someone I was writing a book about "eating animals", they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.”

PeopleKnowsWritingBookAnimalViewsCasesKnowingEatingMeatAssumptionAgricultureInquiryVegetarianismWriting A BookThoroughEating AnimalsEating MeatAnimal Agriculture
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write, because that was exactly how it felt. We could retell our stories and make them better, more representative or aspirational. Or we could choose to tell different stories. The world itself had another chance.”

WorldWritingFirstsDifferentStoriesHomeFeltChancePerfectSonLettersIncludingImpressionMy SonHospitalsRepresentativesFatherhoodFirst ImpressionAnother ChancePerfect Things
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me.”

ThinkingShouldTryingYearsFirstsKindMadeEndsReasonPhilosophyFeltForgetImagineShapesEatingMajorsIntellectualMeatVegetarianAnnoyingConformMoldPretentiousThoughts On LifeParadoxicalSophomoreIntellectual LifeMeat EatingSophomore Year
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I've discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.”

IfsKnowsMindShowsCareFilmScienceMemoriesDarkBecomingHorrorOffersHappeningsMiseryFleshMeatVegetarianVeganFactoriesVegetarianismVeganismOur MemoriesHorror FilmSustenanceDark PlacesFactory FarmingEating Animals
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.”

ShouldIdeasEnoughWholeAnimalWorryClearFoodDiseasePaperStonesNotesIncludingAthleteCancerConfusionDespiteDataUselessMeatVegetarianVeganExcessElsewhereConsumptionRequirementsLinkedPersistentExceedProteinKidneysOptimalEating AnimalsCalciumOsteoporosisMeat IndustryMeat ConsumptionKidney Disease
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.”

LongProblemEyeTogetherRoomsHealthyDiseaseWasteBirdStandingLegsBonesDamageNecksInternalsFarmsFactoriesBlindnessTwistedImmuneBleedingInfectionFilthyImmune SystemParalysisDeformityRespiratoryAnemia
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?”

PeopleHas BeensSaidEndsMomentsLightFeltFingersSubtleGlobesSpinningPillowHaltCoffinsRazorsDisplacementTimepieces
Book:Everything Is Illuminated
Create image

“In the past seven years of love-making he had heard the words "I love you" so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers, and adulterous wives. Women said "I love you" without his ever speaking. "The more you love someone," he came to think, "the harder it is to tell them." It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say "I love you".”

ThinkingYearsChildrenSaidPastWifeHeardStreetsLove YouMouthsHarderSevenStrangerTravelerSeven YearsLove SomeoneWidowsLove MakingFamily FriendsSay I Love YouYears Of Love
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image

“He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid.”

PeopleWritingLittlesPersonsSaidRememberUsedRoomsSpecialPoetPaperSillyStubborn
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
Create image