Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude. — 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
Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance — 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
Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than 'The Metamorphosis'. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I can't stomach any kind of notion that serious fiction is good for us, because I don't believe that everything that's wrong… — 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
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
“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
“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
