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" 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
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" For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Life
Attention
" 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 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 voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself. "
Jonathan Franzen
Certain
Myself
Level
" '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 hate the word 'partner' so much. "
Jonathan Franzen
Word
Much
Hate
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me. "
Jonathan Franzen
Complaints
People
Reading
" The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. "
Jonathan Franzen
You
Real
Pleasure
" 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
" 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'm not fussy about my food. "
Jonathan Franzen
About
Food
Fussy
" 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
" Manhattan is just all bank branches. "
Jonathan Franzen
Manhattan
Bank
Branches
" 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
" We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally. "
Jonathan Franzen
Suffer
Out
May
" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Kind
Life
" 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
" I hate Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods
" 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
" 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
" 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'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" 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
" 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