[b]Jonathan Safran Foer
I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.[/b]
And a lot of good it does them.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
Don’t expect this to ever be pinned down. For example, one way or the other.
Jacob wrestled with God for the blessing. He wrestled with Esau for the blessing. He wrestled with Isaac for the blessing, with Laban for the blessing, and in each case he eventually prevailed. He wrestled because he recognized that the blessings were worth the struggle. He knew that you only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.
Jacob who? Fixed Jacob?
Cruelty prefers abstraction. Some have tried to resolved this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it woudln’t be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn’t do it.
Tell that to, among others, the hunters and gatherers. While they’re still around.
Life is scarier than death.
Well, not counting the times it’s the other way around.
Suddenly Yankel was overcome with a fear of dying, stronger than he felt when his parents passed of natural causes, stronger than when his only brother was killed in the flour mill or when his children died, stronger even than when he was a child and it first occurred to him that he must try to understand what it could mean not to be alive – to be not in darkness, not in unfeeling – to be not being, not to be.
Me too. And not just from watching Woody Allen movies.