Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foeris an American novelist. He is best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and for his non-fiction work Eating Animals. He teaches creative writing at New York University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth21 February 1977
CountryUnited States of America
lend people sort themselves
People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.
food longer obsessed obsession price sad sort
There's never been a culture that wasn't obsessed with food. The sort of sad thing is that our obsession is no longer with food, but with the price of food.
formats move toward
I think there's going to be something that happens now, where books move in two directions, one toward digitized formats and one toward remembering what's nice about the physicality of them.
change eat inherently luxurious matter maybe position question whether wrong
Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now.
protecting shoot
When we talk about protecting our right to have guns, we are talking about protecting our right to shoot bullets. So what is it that's so important to shoot at?
reminds
When a book remembers, we remember. It reminds you that you have a body. So many of the things we may think of as burdensome are actually the things that make us more human.
conversation starts
What the world does not need is a Haggadah that pats itself on the back. It needs a Haggadah that gets out of the way, that starts a conversation and gets out of the way.
art
There's no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with.
asking move
You write to please yourself, you write to move yourself, to engage yourself in the asking of questions that are important to you.
drama family felt hopefully human mind next transmit values
The purpose of the Seder to my mind is to inspire conversations with your family about the human drama and hopefully transmit values to the next generation. I've always felt like this could be better.
call hot mostly
I am an on-and-off vegetarian. Sometimes on, mostly off. I think it is better to be a vegetarian but occasionally, the call of the hot dog overpowers my ethics.
animal children eating inspired
My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration.
answer god word
I will never come around to the idea of an anthropomorphic God. I'm also uncomfortable with the word 'God'... I'm agnostic about the answer and I'm agnostic about the question.
bad choices front goal perfect recognize somehow street stuff time
I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones.