Be that as it may, Tereza continued on her path, and, watching her heifers rub against one another, she thought what nice animals they were. Calm, guileless, and sometimes childishly animated, they looked like fat fifty-year-olds pretending they were fourteen. There was nothing more touching than cows at play. Tereza took pleasure in their antics and could not help thinking (it is an idea that kept coming back to her during her two years in the country) that man is as much a parasite on the cow as the tapeworm is on man: We have sucked their udders like leeches. “Man the cow parasite” is
...more
I haven’t eaten anything that ever had eyes, (except potatoes), since the day I left my parent’s home and started college. The day before that—my last day at home with my parents and brothers and sisters—neighbours were having an outdoor barbecue, which we’d all been invited to—and in their backyard, a pig was turning slowly on a spit over a fire. I looked at it and saw its long eyelashes fizzle. I realised that I could find no difference between eating another animal or a fish or a human. That was the beginning of my vegetarian life.
