Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "I can't remember. Which?" "Do you know what those words mean?" "Not really." "An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical." "I'm an optimist." "Well, that's good, because there’s no irrefutable evidence. There’s nothing that could convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

As told by Kafka's close friend Max Brod:"Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. 'Now at least I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore.' It was the time he turned strictly vegetarian.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

As we drove, I imagined we were standing still and the world was coming toward us.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

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

Because sometimes people who seem guided up being not as good as you might have hoped.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. Society didn’t ban child labor because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Being reliable is something. Being good.

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unalterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.

— Jonathan Safran Foer