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Life Quotes by Jonathan Franzen

38 Life quotes by Jonathan Franzen

All Life quotes Jonathan Franzen’s page

The problem was money and the indignities of life without it, showing how lack of cash can make everyday things feel like a torment. He also notes that a single insight can shift a whole life, and that reading a book adds a small change to the way we see the world.

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The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

Jonathan Franzen

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For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds.

Jonathan Franzen

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The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

Jonathan Franzen

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...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

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Robin turned and looked straight into her. "What's life for?" "I don't know." "I don't either. But I don't think it's about…

Jonathan Franzen

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Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.

Jonathan Franzen

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“You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life…

Jonathan Franzen

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“The only guaranteed result of having an affair would be to add yet another disapproving woman to his life.”

Jonathan Franzen

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It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things…

Jonathan Franzen

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“My first hero was Thomas Edison, whose adult life had consisted entirely of free time.”

Jonathan Franzen

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“It's good to have friends in life. If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody's perfect.”

Jonathan Franzen

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To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember…

Jonathan Franzen

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“The guiding principle of Martin’s personality, the sum of his interior existence, was the desire to be left alone. If all those…

Jonathan Franzen

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How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life,…

Jonathan Franzen

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“Taking a cab to the city center, she was pierced unexpectedly by regret for not doing exactly that: not walking the streets…

Jonathan Franzen

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“I'm starting to think paradise isn't eternal contentment. It's more like there's something eternal about feeling contented. There's no such thing as…

Jonathan Franzen

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If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood…

Jonathan Franzen

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The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was…

Jonathan Franzen

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Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on…

Jonathan Franzen

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“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

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“And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes…

Jonathan Franzen

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“I had a nightmare about the Averys’ sweet-tempered German shepherd, Ina. In the dream, as I was sitting on the floor in…

Jonathan Franzen

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“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

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Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the…

Jonathan Franzen

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If you read the biographies of people who have written good books, you often see the point where they suddenly come into…

Jonathan Franzen

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And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight-- isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing…

Jonathan Franzen

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“Birds were what became of dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at the Museum of Natural History…

Jonathan Franzen

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“But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for…

Jonathan Franzen

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“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

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“Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all…

Jonathan Franzen

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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

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Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the…

Jonathan Franzen

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Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was…

Jonathan Franzen

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“Gary had hoped to find her more cooperative. He already had one "alternative" sibling and he didn't need another. It frustrated him…

Jonathan Franzen

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“Chipper intuited that this feeling of futility would be a fixture in his life. A dull waiting and then a broken promise,…

Jonathan Franzen

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Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.…

Jonathan Franzen

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“And yet there’s other species even closer to zero. I know that. And I hope to God somebody else is worrying about…

Jonathan Franzen

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“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the…

Jonathan Franzen

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“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…

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Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.

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“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…

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“Birds were what became of dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at the Museum of Natural History had done…

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“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…

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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…

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Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I dont see how you could…

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“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

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

Jonathan Franzen

“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

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

“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

“Alfred believed that the real and the true were a minority that the world was bent on exterminating.”

Jonathan Franzen

“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

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