“We Are All Animals Of This Planet. We Are All Creatures. And Nonhuman Animals Experience Pain Sensations

“We are the last generation of human beings who will have a choice whether or not to save the earth. If we don’t do something to protect our environment, it will be too late for our children to try” — River Phoenix, 1991

“If I didn’t think I could be a part of a movement that could influence, and be a part of helping and change, if I couldn’t help that through what I’m doing, I wouldn’t do this. But I’m seeing that through this position -in this career, and where I have these magazine interviews- I can be an example, and I think that’s important. In all the interviews I do, I say something about being vegan. I don’t want to come off as if I’m a savior. I’m only a very small part of anything, but I think it’s important to be involved. I’m interested in meditation and finding spiritual fulfillment. But for me to just go off and devote my life to monkhood in the jungle would be ultimately abandoning the world, and the consciousness would be on a selfish level. I think I can do a lot more good for this planet if I am out there." 

- River on an interview for Vegetarian Times, March 1988.

“It really upsets me that we’re trained from an early age to aspire to be the ideal man or the ideal woman. It’s prejudice, really. Many people learn to accept themselves, but others are miserable if they don’t look like Robert Redford. And they shouldn’t be. It’s oppressive. A lot of it has to do with show business. For example, I would like to see more blacks in leading men’s roles, to project a more realistic picture of who we are as a people.”

- River Phoenix

Save me Brazilian catholic guilt

Not even a priest who proudly claims to love humanity, who lives for humanity. Do you doubt me?

Due to personal reasons, I will now be regressing back to 2014 me, so if you see me watching old Markiplier videos or listening to Badlands and Crybaby then just look the other way

“He knows his mind and speaks it, even if what he says doesn’t fit in with his peers. You could call River the ultimate individualist. A vegan in the day of McDonalds, a pacifist in the era of nuclear weapons” — Teen Beat, 1988

The Craft (1996) dir. Andrew Fleming

“He grew up as a naive little kid saying, ‘I want to save the world’. As he got older he started to realize that it was impossible to do. Nobody can. A lot of people go nuts because they feel the pain and they want to do something about it and they can’t. I think River felt that very intensely”

— Josh Greenbaum