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" 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

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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. "

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" But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny. "

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" 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. "

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" 'The Man Who Loved Children,' Christina Stead's masterpiece, remains the most fabulous book that hardly anyone I know has read. "

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" 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. "

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" I don't dislike people; I love people. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" 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

" Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me. "

Jonathan Franzen

" I defy anyone to finish Halldor Laxness's 'Independent People' without wetting the pages with tears. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" 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

" I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "

Jonathan Franzen

" I'm not fussy about my food. "

Jonathan Franzen

" I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. "

Jonathan Franzen

" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" I'm a poor person who has money. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" 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

" I hate the word 'partner' so much. "

Jonathan Franzen

" I hate Whole Foods. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" 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

" We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally. "

Jonathan Franzen

" I'm not a sexist. "

Jonathan Franzen