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" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really
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" I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "
Jonathan Franzen
Certain
Myself
Level
" 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 hate Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods
" 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
" I'm not fussy about my food. "
Jonathan Franzen
About
Food
Fussy
" I defy anyone to finish Halldor Laxness's 'Independent People' without wetting the pages with tears. "
Jonathan Franzen
People
Tears
Independent
" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Kind
Life
" 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
" But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny. "
Jonathan Franzen
Being
Yeah
Think
" '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
" '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
" 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
" 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
" I hate that word dysfunction. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dysfunction
Word
Hate
" I was a late child from my parents, so I grew up surrounded by people a lot older than me. I think even when I was 21, I felt like I was a 70-year-old man. "
Jonathan Franzen
Think
Child
Man
" I hate the word 'partner' so much. "
Jonathan Franzen
Word
Much
Hate
" 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 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
" The technology I like is the American paperback edition of 'Freedom.' I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology. "
Jonathan Franzen
Freedom
Work
Water
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die. "
Jonathan Franzen
People
Me
Life
" I'm not a sexist. "
Jonathan Franzen
Sexist
" 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
" 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
" Manhattan is just all bank branches. "
Jonathan Franzen
Manhattan
Bank
Branches
" 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 really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. "
Jonathan Franzen
Doing
Enjoy
Nonfiction