“My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating ani...” — Jonathan Safran Foer Quote

My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration.

Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.

There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on.

It's possible to make things that aren't just money-makers. Something wonderful for its own sake.

Closeness to animals creates the desire to understand them, and not just a little piece of them, but the whole animal. It makes us wonder what goes on in their heads even though we fully realize that the answer can only be approximated.

The human animal has evolved as a preeminently social animal.

You can get fake fur, which, if that's what you want - if you want that fur look - it looks just the same. It's really unnecessary to skin an animal when you can get something that looks just the same without hurting anything.

Rather than studying the most complex form of memory in a very complicated animal, we had to take the most simple form - an implicit form of memory - in a very simple animal. So I began to look around for very simple animals. And I focused in on the marine snail Aplysia.