I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“When I'm writing I don't want anyone else in the room - including myself.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
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
I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking… — 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
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
“She pondered the arrangements of the paintings on a wall like a writer pondered commas.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I think the mission for the writer is to tell stories in a compelling way about the stuff that cannot be talked… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“He didn't understand what happened to him. He felt like a piece of paper that had once had coherent writing on it… — 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
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 am not somebody who goes around saying men are superior or that male writers are superior. In fact, I really go… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger 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
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
“What happens to the people who became writers because yakking and tweeting and bragging felt to them like intolerably shallow forms of… — 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
“He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike purity. If love… — 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
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
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I… — 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
