Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny. "
Jonathan Franzen
Being
Yeah
Think
Related Quotes:
" I hate the word 'partner' so much. "
Jonathan Franzen
Word
Much
Hate
" We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally. "
Jonathan Franzen
Suffer
Out
May
" The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. "
Jonathan Franzen
You
Real
Pleasure
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Kind
Life
" 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
" I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "
Jonathan Franzen
Live
Friendship
Think
" Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me. "
Jonathan Franzen
Complaints
People
Reading
" 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 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 was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second. "
Jonathan Franzen
First
Book
Second
" 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
" '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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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 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 Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods
" 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 hate that word dysfunction. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dysfunction
Word
Hate
" I'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" I'm not a sexist. "
Jonathan Franzen
Sexist
" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really
" 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 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
" I don't dislike people; I love people. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dislike
People
I Love