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" 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

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" 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

" For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds. "

Jonathan Franzen

" Manhattan is just all bank branches. "

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 hate Whole Foods. "

Jonathan Franzen

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

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

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

Jonathan Franzen

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

Jonathan Franzen

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

Jonathan Franzen

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

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

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

Jonathan Franzen

" 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

" 's one of the perversities of the age: I'm embarrassed by its success, but I'm happy it's selling. "

Jonathan Franzen

" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Jonathan Franzen

" I'm not a sexist. "

Jonathan Franzen

" 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