Jonathan Franzen Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it's the right unhappiness.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Heartbreak, Kind, Unhappiness

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.447, Macmillan

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• His tiredness hurt so much it kept him awake.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Hurt, Hurt So Much, Awake

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.274, Macmillan

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• 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.

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• This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Comforting, Contradictory, Chosen

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.432, Macmillan

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• The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Animal, Opportunity, Atmosphere

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• Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression's actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Depression, Unique, Essence

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

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• And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?

  Jonathan Franzen

  Ordinary, Sad Truth, Extraordinary

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.197, Macmillan

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• Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Cider, Becoming, Cold Night

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The corrections”

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• He had a happy canine way of seeking approval without seeming insecure.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Insecure, Way, Approval

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.396, Macmillan

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• To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can’t really multitask reading a book.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Book, Reading, Novel

  "Jonathan Franzen Blasts Author Videos ... In His Own Author Video". www.huffingtonpost.com. August 16, 2010.

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• How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Running, Negative, Said

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.568, Macmillan

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• You're either reading a book or you're not.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Book, Reading

  "Jonathan Franzen Blasts Author Videos ... In His Own Author Video", www.huffingtonpost.com. August 16, 2010.

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• 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

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• For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing . . . the final tipping balance.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Balance, Finals, Tipping

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.165, Macmillan

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• Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Data, Imagination, Needs

  "Jonathan Franzen on fiction, fame and Freedom". Interview with John Barber, www.theglobeandmail.com. August 27, 2010.

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• He watched a catbird hopping around in an azalea that was readying itself to bloom; he envied the bird for knowing nothing of what he knew; he would have swapped souls with it in a heartbeat. And then to take wing, to know the air's buoyancy even for an hour: the trad was a no-brainer, and the catbird, with its lively indifference to him, its sureness of physical selfhood, seemed well aware of how preferable it was to be the bird.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Azaleas, Knowing Nothing, Air

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• The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical story than "The Meta­morphosis".

  Jonathan Franzen

  Fiction, Stories, Invention

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

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• The problem with making a virtual world of oneself is akin to the problem with projecting ourselves onto a cyberworld: there’s no end of virtual spaces in which to seek stimulation, but their very endlessness, the perpetual stimulation without satisfaction, becomes imprisoning.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Space, World, Satisfaction

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away: Essays”, p.41, Macmillan

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• How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Real, Order, Understanding

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.94, Macmillan

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• [T]o 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

  Love, Struggle, Self

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• An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Ink, Bottles, Quaint

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.58, Macmillan

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• Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Heart, Serious, Cameras

  2002 How to Be Alone.

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• If you look at the New Testament, it's a gospel of love. Yes, there's talk of judgement and there's talk of heaven and there's talk of people not getting into heaven, but it doesn't seem to me that the fundamental message of the gospels was one of guilt and retribution so much as love.

  Jonathan Franzen

  People, Heaven, Judgement

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

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• I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Taste, Responsible, Strain

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Strong Motion: A Novel”, p.171, Macmillan

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• The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Revision, Life Is

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