Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need. — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance — 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
I don't personally like the e-readers they've come up with so far. I don't fetishize books, but I do like that they're… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
The technology I like is the American paperback edition of 'Freedom.' I can spill water on it, and it would still work!… — 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
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
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find. — 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
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
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
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember… — Jonathan Franzen Copy Share Image
I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels… — 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
“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
“I had started keeping a journal, and I was discovering that I didn't need school in order to experience the misery 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
Even in an intensely mediated world, in a world that offers at least the illusion of radical self-invention and radical freedom of… — 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
Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity. — 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
