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" 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
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" To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison. "
Jonathan Franzen
Life
Book
Time
" '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
" I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "
Jonathan Franzen
Live
Friendship
Think
" 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
" 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 voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "
Jonathan Franzen
Certain
Myself
Level
" I'm not a sexist. "
Jonathan Franzen
Sexist
" 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
" 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
" Manhattan is just all bank branches. "
Jonathan Franzen
Manhattan
Bank
Branches
" 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
" Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me. "
Jonathan Franzen
Complaints
People
Reading
" I don't even read positive reviews unless they are absolutely certified by eight different people to not contain one thing that could upset me. "
Jonathan Franzen
Positive
Different
People
" I am not somebody who goes around saying men are superior or that male writers are superior. In fact, I really go out of my way to champion women's work that I think is not getting enough attention. None of that is ever enough. Because a villain is needed. It's like there's no way to make myself not male. "
Jonathan Franzen
Champion
Women
Myself
" I'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it? "
Jonathan Franzen
Book
Nice
Looking Back
" 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
" The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. "
Jonathan Franzen
You
Real
Pleasure
" Only in my 40s did I become a person whose heart lifts whenever he hears a grosbeak singing or a towhee calling, and who hurries out to see a golden plover that's been reported in the neighbourhood, just because it's a beautiful bird, with truly golden plumage, and has flown all the way from Alaska. "
Jonathan Franzen
Singing
Alaska
Beautiful
" 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
" 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
" I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. "
Jonathan Franzen
Doing
Enjoy
Nonfiction
" I hate Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods
" I hate the word 'partner' so much. "
Jonathan Franzen
Word
Much
Hate
" I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats. "
Jonathan Franzen
Fun
Way
Training
" 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
" We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally. "
Jonathan Franzen
Suffer
Out
May
" 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 hate that word dysfunction. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dysfunction
Word
Hate
" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really