He couldn't figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Her very difficulty created friction, and friction led to satisfaction...” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“The lump in his throat was evidence of how much, in spite of everything, he still loved her.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
she was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Taking a cab to the city center, she was pierced unexpectedly by regret for not doing exactly that: not walking the streets… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“although in truth her passivity was calculated, because she knew passivity inflamed him. He had her, and to some extent she wanted… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Only in my 40s did I become a person whose heart lifts whenever he hears a grosbeak singing or a towhee calling,… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are.… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary… — 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
