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 Copy Share Image
'The Man Who Loved Children,' Christina Stead's masterpiece, remains the most fabulous book that hardly anyone I know has read. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
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… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I don't personally like the e-readers they've come up with so far. I don't fetishize books, but I do like that they're… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“What lived on-in me- was the discomfort of how completely I'd outgrown the novel I'd once been so happy to live in” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“I hate the concept of likeability—it gave us two terms of George Bush, whom a plurality of voters wanted to have a… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
What he'd never understood about men in his position, in all the books he'd read and movies he'd seen about them, was… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society—to help solve our contemporary problems—seems to me a peculiarly American… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read: where to find the… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Certain kinds of things that the novel used to do, which was, "Oh, I'm living out here in West Nowhere, Nebraska and… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I'd be surprised if non-fiction writers hate to be interviewed. We all hate them, because there's really nothing to say except "Read… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“She was one of the few stay-at-home moms in Ramsey Hill and was famously averse to speaking well of herself or ill… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I try to write things that can't be made into movies. My novels have thwarted many attempts to film them and I… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
If you read the biographies of people who have written good books, you often see the point where they suddenly come into… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Not just Negroponte, who doesn't like to read, but even Birkerts, who thinks that history is ending, underestimates the instability of society… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“But sympathy in novels need not be simply a matter of the reader’s direct identification with a fictional character. It can also… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing . . . the final tipping balance. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Readers and writers are united in their need for solitude, in their pursuit of substance in a time of ever-increasing evanescence: in… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
A big part of me would be very proud never having anything of mine adapted, because if you want the real experience,… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“The fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
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 Copy Share
“Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“Birds were what became of dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at the Museum of Natural History had done… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“Can a better kind of fiction save the world? There’s always some tiny hope (strange things do happen), but the answer is almost certainly… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
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… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I dont see how you could… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“I'm saying the structure and f the entire culture is flawed, chip said. I'm saying the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“An odd thing about beauty, however, is that it's absence tends not to arouse our sympathy as much as other forms of privation do.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“It was this motley band of modest peeps and plovers on the beach who reminded me of the human beings I loved best -… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“Alfred believed that the real and the true were a minority that the world was bent on exterminating.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment.… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share
