Jonathan Safran Foer

I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.

The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.

When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.

Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now.

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.

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

There's no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with.