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" I don't dislike people; I love people. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dislike
People
I Love
Related Quotes:
" I hate the word 'partner' so much. "
Jonathan Franzen
Word
Much
Hate
" The radical otherness of birds is integral to their beauty and their value. They are always among us but never of us. Their indifference to us ought to serve as a chastening reminder that we're not the measure of all things. "
Jonathan Franzen
Beauty
Value
Measure
" Manhattan is just all bank branches. "
Jonathan Franzen
Manhattan
Bank
Branches
" When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way. "
Jonathan Franzen
People
Hope
Family
" I hate that word dysfunction. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dysfunction
Word
Hate
" I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "
Jonathan Franzen
Live
Friendship
Think
" I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second. "
Jonathan Franzen
First
Book
Second
" 'The Man Who Loved Children,' Christina Stead's masterpiece, remains the most fabulous book that hardly anyone I know has read. "
Jonathan Franzen
Know
Children
Book
" One reason that birds matter - ought to matter - is that they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding. They're the most vivid and widespread representatives of the Earth as it was before people arrived on it. "
Jonathan Franzen
Best
Birds
Earth
" I'm not fussy about my food. "
Jonathan Franzen
About
Food
Fussy
" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Kind
Life
" 's one of the perversities of the age: I'm embarrassed by its success, but I'm happy it's selling. "
Jonathan Franzen
Selling
Success
Happy
" A big part of me would be very proud never having anything of mine adapted, because if you want the real experience, there's only one way to get it. You're going to actually have to be a reader. "
Jonathan Franzen
Me
Way
Experience
" I had a brief period of questioning whether I should perhaps adopt a child. And my New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was horrified by the notion. "
Jonathan Franzen
Should
Child
Editor
" I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer. "
Jonathan Franzen
Seriously
Trend
Writer
" I'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" If you have not had direct firsthand experience of loving a category of person - a person of a different race, a profoundly religious person, things that are real stark differences between people - I think it is very hard to dare, or necessarily even want, to write fully from the inside of a person. "
Jonathan Franzen
Think
Loving
People
" If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation. "
Jonathan Franzen
Conversation
You
Talk
" It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated. "
Jonathan Franzen
Writing
Beginning
Enjoy
" It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council. "
Jonathan Franzen
Plot
Up
Step
" For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Life
Attention
" There used to be rather serious firewalls between the artist and the buying public - the gallery, the publisher. And technology demolishes that wall and basically says, 'Self-promote or die.' And that is a bad head for any sort of artist to be forced into. "
Jonathan Franzen
Bad
Artist
Technology
" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really
" But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny. "
Jonathan Franzen
Being
Yeah
Think
" I look at my father, who was in many ways an unhappy person, but who, not long before he got sick, said that the greatest source of satisfaction in his life had been going to work in the company of other workers. "
Jonathan Franzen
Long
Father
Look
" I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly. "
Jonathan Franzen
Doing
Find
Hard
" I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover. "
Jonathan Franzen
Name
Now
Two
" Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me. "
Jonathan Franzen
Complaints
People
Reading
" I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "
Jonathan Franzen
Certain
Myself
Level
" I think cultures of conformity produce vast quantities of shame, both in people who simply can't conform and people who do conform, but underneath, they're not feeling conformist. "
Jonathan Franzen
Think
Conformity
People