Jonathan Franzen Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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

• 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.

• The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Reader, Spectators

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

• Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the joint conclusion that the purpose of writing fiction was “a way out of loneliness.” (NY Times article on the memorial service of David Foster Wallace.)

  Jonathan Franzen

  Loneliness, Writing, Years

• This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop it. I'm writing this.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Notebook, Writing, Forgiving

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away: Essays”, p.19, Macmillan

• Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Interesting, Verbs

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

• 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, Book, Writing

• If you read the biographies of people who have written good books, you often see the point where they suddenly come into themselves, and those weeks in the spring of 1997 were when I came into myself as a writer. They feel like some of the best weeks of writing I’ll ever have. The discovery that I could write better about something as trivial as an ordinary family dinner than I could about the exploding prison population of the United States, and the corporatization of American life, and all the other things I’d been trying to do, was a real revelation.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Spring, Real, Book

• I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Nonfiction, Enjoy

• Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society—to help solve our contemporary problems—seems to me a peculiarly American delusion. To write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them: isn't this enough? Isn't it a lot?

  Jonathan Franzen

  Taken, Writing, Weight

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.84, Macmillan

• I try to write things that can't be made into movies. My novels have thwarted many attempts to film them and I think that was true of the essay, too. If you'd actually tried to be true to the essay, it would have been, perhaps, boring. So taking that narrow little cast of characters and expanding it out, that was what was exciting about the project for me.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Character, Writing, Thinking

  "Exclusive: Jonathan Franzen sounds off on bird poaching, climate change and 'performing love'". Interview with Lindsay Abrams, www.salon.com. April 27, 2015.

• 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

  Book, Reading, Writing

• I'm not too concerned what happens to my books after I'm dead. But I am very concerned by what's going on with the culture of reading and writing nowadays.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Book, Reading, Writing

• Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Adventure, Fiction

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

• When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Struggle, Writing, Mean

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Shapes

• 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

  Nice, Book, Writing

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