Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Related Quotes:
" The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. "
Jonathan Franzen
You
Real
Pleasure
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "
Jonathan Franzen
Certain
Myself
Level
" '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
" I don't dislike people; I love people. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dislike
People
I Love
" 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 don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "
Jonathan Franzen
Live
Friendship
Think
" 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
" 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
" I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. "
Jonathan Franzen
Doing
Enjoy
Nonfiction
" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really
" I'm not fussy about my food. "
Jonathan Franzen
About
Food
Fussy
" I hate Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" 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
" 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 defy anyone to finish Halldor Laxness's 'Independent People' without wetting the pages with tears. "
Jonathan Franzen
People
Tears
Independent
" 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
" 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