I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones.

I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.

There is an overabundance of rational reasons to say no to factory-farmed meat: It is the No. 1 cause of global warming, it systematically forces tens of billions of animals to suffer in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs, it is a decisive factor in the development of swine and avian flus, and so on.

I think there's going to be something that happens now, where books move in two directions, one toward digitized formats and one toward remembering what's nice about the physicality of them.

It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns.

I am an on-and-off vegetarian. Sometimes on, mostly off. I think it is better to be a vegetarian but occasionally, the call of the hot dog overpowers my ethics.

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts.

Look, taste is clearly the crudest of our senses: this is scientifically, objectively factual. It is less nuanced. Eyesight is extraordinary - hearing, touch. I find people who devote their whole lives to taste a little strange.

The kind of funny irony is that a lot of people talk about ethical meat eating as if it's a way to care about things, but also not to alienate yourself from the rest of the world. But it's so much more alienating than vegetarianism.

People who care about animals tend to care about people. They don't care about animals to the exclusion of people. Caring is not a finite resource and, even more than that, it's like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit.

Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud.

Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It's almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.

My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.

Consumers are going to have get used to eating less meat - to paying more for better quality meat and eating significantly less of it.

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.

The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.

It's hard to draw clear lines between writing and life and I don't think it is necessary to or necessarily good to.

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.

We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.

To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't.

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

The purpose of the Seder to my mind is to inspire conversations with your family about the human drama and hopefully transmit values to the next generation. I've always felt like this could be better.