Quote

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jonathan Safran Foer
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 21
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Cruelty
Depends
Choose
Understanding
Ability
Ignore

More quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

Image
We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I'm a novelist, I'm not an activist. I'm not a non-fiction writer, I'm not a journalist. I'm not a foodie, I'm not even really an animal person, or an environmentalist. I did the best I could with this, but it's not who I am.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
....Worthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Abraham responds Here I am when God asks him to sacrifice his son, and he answers Here I am when his son asks him about what is happening. It's a paradoxical moment. He can't be fully present for his God or his son.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
She saw through the shell of me into the center of me
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
My point is that there are a lot of forces, like the media and the general political rhetoric tells us we should have more. That we should do better than our parents and have a bigger house or a better car.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I can't even say 'hair pie,'' I told him, 'unless I'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Why didn't he say goodbye? I gave myself a bruise. Why didn't he say 'I love you'?
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
My insides don't match up with my outsides. Do anyone's inside 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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to shout myself into his ear.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
August has passed, and yet summer continues by force to grow days. They sprout secretly between the chapters of the year, covertly included between its pages.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Image
[…] but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.
Jonathan Safran Foer