Jonathan Safran Foer Doe Quotations

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

The word vegetarian, I think, does a disservice because there are a lot of people who care but maybe don't care, or can't care in an ultimate way. If you think about environmentalism, nobody would ask, "Are you an environmentalist or not?" The question doesn't make any sense.

Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

What does it remember like?

Factory farming, of course, does not cause all the world's problems, but is is remarkable just how many of them intersect there.

It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?

I'm a vegetarian. You're a what? I don't eat meat. How can you not eat meat? I just don't. He says he does not eat meat. What? No meat? No meat. Steak? No... Chickens! No... And what about the sausage? No, no sausage, no meat! He says he does not eat any meat. Not even sausage? I know! What is wrong with him? What is wrong with you? Nothing, I just don't eat meat!

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering.

Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?

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.

Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn’t exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.

...there are only some many times you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.

Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.