Rory Freedman

“You write a book, it's out for however many years, and with the passing of time, you're not the same person. I'm not the same person I was when I wrote those books; I'm not even the same person I was when I started writing 'Beg.' I had many shifts spiritually, and one of them was in the use of language.”

“Speaking the truth gets a little easier each time you do it.”

“Compassion and mercy are important, period. It doesn't matter who's at our receiving end, but we need to be flexing those muscles. It's not mutually exclusive: If you have compassion for children starving in Africa, it doesn't mean you can't have compassion for adults in Africa or animals that are being tortured and abused.”

“There's no reason that we need to be counting things and adding things up in order to sit down and eat a meal. I enjoy eating so much; I don't want to do match every time I eat. I guarantee you, maybe your diet soda has no calories, but it's still poison. We have to think about what are we putting in our mouths.”

“I love animals; I've always loved animals. It's how I identified myself for so long, but I didn't know that in so many ways, I was living my life not in alignment with that. And once I learned about those ways I could be loving animals better, I made those changes, which made me happier and had me living a life that had me contributing.”

“I'm afraid love may not exist the way I want it to.”

“I've been seeing more and more Gardein soy chicken and soy beef products lately, and they're pretty darn good.”

“If people learned what they were contributing to every time they ate meat, eggs, or dairy, surely they would be just as motivated as I was to change.”

“I hate writing. There are a million other things I'd rather be doing. I write because I have to. Because if I feel so strongly about what is happening to animals, and I don't do anything to help them, who will?”

“Now that you're a Skinny Bitch, don't turn into a skinny bitch. We conceived of the title, Skinny Bitch, to get attention and sell books.... But we are not bitches, and we have no desire to promote bitchiness. There is nothing uglier than a pretty woman who's nasty. If you look great, you should feel good about yourself and be happy.”

“Traveling is magical, inspiring, and life - changing.”

“My whole life growing up, both my parents told me not to swear like a sailor. After college, I recall there was finally a time where I swore, and neither one of them was correcting me, and I felt so relieved. I thought, finally; I can finally be myself and not get yelled at.”

“Parma is an amazing Parmesan cheese substitute made from walnuts. It tastes like a dream and is healthy, to boot!”

“Sometimes it's hard to tell where your instincts start and your baggage stops.”

“A favorite cooking method? I'm a fan of all of them! Anything that gets a pile of random ingredients into a cruelty-free dish works for me!”

“So many people romanticize writing. And I get it. But I never once wanted to be a writer.”

“Don't crop ears or tails or declaw cats; it's really painful. People think it's necessary, but it's painful for the animal, and it's completely unnecessary.”

“The Rice Dream rice milk is like a savior in my life, and I couldn't live without it. The Earth Balance soy butter is so good you could eat it with a spoon.”