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" 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
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" 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 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
" We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally. "
Jonathan Franzen
Suffer
Out
May
" '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
" 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
Writing
Beginning
Enjoy
" 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
" '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
" For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Life
Attention
" 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
" 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
" The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. "
Jonathan Franzen
My Life
Kind
Life
" I'm not fussy about my food. "
Jonathan Franzen
About
Food
Fussy
" I hate that word dysfunction. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dysfunction
Word
Hate
" And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. "
Jonathan Franzen
Smart
Silence
Really
" 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
" I don't dislike people; I love people. "
Jonathan Franzen
Dislike
People
I Love
" 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 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'm a poor person who has money. "
Jonathan Franzen
Who
Person
Money
" 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 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
" 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
" Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me. "
Jonathan Franzen
Complaints
People
Reading
" 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
" 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
" I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with. "
Jonathan Franzen
Live
Friendship
Think
" 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
Should
Child
Editor
" I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. "
Jonathan Franzen
Doing
Enjoy
Nonfiction
" I hate Whole Foods. "
Jonathan Franzen
Hate
Whole
Whole Foods