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" I defy anyone to finish Halldor Laxness's 'Independent People' without wetting the pages with tears. "
Jonathan Franzen
People
Tears
Independent
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" 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
" 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'm not a sexist. "
Jonathan Franzen
Sexist
" 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
" 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 hate that word dysfunction. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dysfunction
Word
Hate
" I hate the word 'partner' so much. "
Jonathan Franzen
Word
Much
Hate
" 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
" I'm not fussy about my food. "
Jonathan Franzen
About
Food
Fussy
" 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
" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Kind
Life
" 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 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
" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really
" I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "
Jonathan Franzen
Live
Friendship
Think
" I'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny. "
Jonathan Franzen
Being
Yeah
Think
" 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 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
" We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally. "
Jonathan Franzen
Suffer
Out
May
" For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Life
Attention
" 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
" 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 really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. "
Jonathan Franzen
Doing
Enjoy
Nonfiction
" 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
" 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 voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "
Jonathan Franzen
Certain
Myself
Level
" The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. "
Jonathan Franzen
You
Real
Pleasure
" I don't dislike people; I love people. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dislike
People
I Love
" I hate Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods