“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
“Only I still had a problem. The problem was my parents. Of the many things I was afraid of in those days… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Pip's mother's lane was spongy with redwood needles dislodged and sodden with the rain, the sound of which surrounded her polyrhythmically, a… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“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 father was dry-eyed but the mother kept erupting, like loudly, unprovoked, in a keening foreign wail that was almost like song;… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Every night after dinner he honed this skill of enduring a dull thing that brought a parent pleasure. It seemed to him… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“As she left her parents' neighborhood, the houses got newer and bigger and boxier. Through windows with no mullions or fake plastic… — 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
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
I look at my father, who was in many ways an unhappy person, but who, not long before he got sick, said… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
“Although in general Gary applauded the modern trend toward individual self-management of retirement funds and long-distance calling plans and private-schooling options, he… — 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
