“Patty believed that parents have a duty to teach their children how to recognize reality when they see it.” — 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 a late child from my parents, so I grew up surrounded by people a lot older than me. I think… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“There was, of course, nowhere better in the world to be than New York City. This fact was the foundation of her… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Family's the one thing you can't change. You can cover yourself with tattoos. You can get a grapefruit-sized ring going through your… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“She had to tell him, while she still had time, how wrong he’d been and how right she’d been. How wrong not… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“I saw it all of a sudden. That whether I liked it or not, the survivor and the artist was me, not… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“She has embarrassingly inquired, of her children, whether there's a woman in his life, and has rejoiced at hearing no. Not because… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“The cabin was dark. Inside it was the sound of her childhood, the patter of rain on a roof that consisted only… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads… — 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
“She told herself a story about a daughter in a family so hungry for a daughter that it would have eaten her… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Part of why kids like this scared me was that they seemed authentic.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Local politicians of color said children and tomorrow. They said digital and democracy and history.” — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I had a brief period of questioning whether I should perhaps adopt a child. And my New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was… — 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 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
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
