Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it.

But compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

It was my grandmother who taught me that one tea bag makes as many cups of tea as you’re serving, and that every part of the apple is edible.

When I was four, we fostered a cousin’s dog for a summer. I kicked it. My father told me we don’t kick animals. When I was seven, I mourned the death of my goldfish. I learned that my father had flushed him down the toilet. I told my father — in other, less civil words — we don’t flush animals down the toilet.