In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.
There are times when one needs to disappear while in the living room, and sometimes one simply wants to disappear.
Being reliable is something. Being good.
It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do?
I have witnessed Grandfather cry, and I implore myself to say that I desire to never witness him cry again. If this signifies that I must do things for him so that he will not cry, then I will do those things. If this signifies that I must not look when he cries, then I will not look.
One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about.
The horse at the bottom of the river, shrouded by the sunken night sky, closed its heavy eyes. The prehistoric ant in Yankel’s ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame.
At first I thought I’d walked into a tree, but then that tree became a person, who was also recovering on the ground, and then I saw that it was her and she saw that it was me...
A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent.
They’re all about love.
And I love the idea of books being more than books, or being, rather, something other than books. I think the ideal experience of my book would be like listening to music.
We go on killing each other to no purpose! It is war waged by humanity against humanity, and it will only end when there’s no one left to fight!
We talked for hours, but we just kept repeating those same things over and over and over.
In the emptiness of evenings, serious and unequivocal, he would say: “How beautiful is forgetting! what relief it would be for the world to lose some of its contents!
I have an aristocratic smile and like to punch people.
Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.
Objects that don’t exist don’t exist. If we were to imagine such a thing as an object that didn’t exist, it would be that thing that God hated. This is the strongest argument against the nonbeliever. If God didn’t exist, he would have to hate himself, and that is obviously nonsense.
Antropocentrisme: de mens staat bovenaan in de evolutie, we zijn een geschikte maatstaf om het leven van andere dieren tegen af te zetten en de rechtmatige bezitter van al wat leeft.
Als we op een dag een levensvorm tegenkomen die machtiger en intelligenter is dan wij zelf, en die soort zou ons zien zoals wij vissen zien, wat zouden we dan als argument aanvoeren om niet te worden opgegeten?
But unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. This amounts to millions of pounds of meat now being thrown away every year.