Jonathan Franzen Quotes

Quotes about:

• I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Heart, Thinking, Trying

  44 Copy quote

• Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Solitude, Fiction, Problem

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away: Essays”, p.40, Macmillan

  31 Copy quote

• When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?

  Jonathan Franzen

  Real, Animal, Years

  FaceBook post by Jonathan Franzen from Apr 06, 2012

  49 Copy quote

• Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Spiritual, Real, Struggle

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away: Essays”, p.9, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

• Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Funny, Witty, Falling In Love

  "Freedom". Book by Jonathan Franzen, 2010.

  22 Copy quote

• Being dead's only a problem if you know you're dead, which you never do because you're dead!

  Jonathan Franzen

  Problem, Ifs, Corrections

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.324, Macmillan

  17 Copy quote

• But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Reading, Lessons, Firsts

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.178, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Decision, Scary

  34 Copy quote

• Without privacy there was no point in being an individual.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Privacy, Individual, No Point

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.465, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Ignorance, Skills, Survival Skills

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.267, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody's perfect.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Perfect, Want, Remember

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.137, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• I admire your capacity for admiring.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Capacity, Admire, Admiring

  4 Copy quote

• It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Connections, Fiction

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Jonathan Franzen, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

  25 Copy quote

• And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight-- isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before?

  Jonathan Franzen

  Stronger, Events, Strange

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.305, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Mean, Forever, Desire

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.70, Macmillan

  14 Copy quote

• Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

  Jonathan Franzen

  Distance, Fiction, Way

  18 Copy quote

• Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.

  Jonathan Franzen

  People, Depth, Novel

  12 Copy quote

• Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Integrity, Reading, Intellectual

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.82, Macmillan

  18 Copy quote

• Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

  Jonathan Franzen

  World, Realism, Particular

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.87, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Comfort, Succeed, Tribes

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.96, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

• Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Sexy, Stars, Interesting

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away: Essays”, p.7, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• she was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Ideas, Personality, Littles

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.18, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Dream, Personality, Limitless

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.445, Macmillan

  21 Copy quote

• Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Years, World, Ifs

  "Jonathan Franzen warns ebooks are corroding values" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. January 30, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Readers and writers are united in their need for solitude, in their pursuit of substance in a time of ever-increasing evanescence: in their reach inward, via print, for a way out of loneliness.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Loneliness, Solitude, Needs

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.88, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

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