All Jonathan Franzen Quotes
- You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but… Behind
- Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find. Deep
- You see more sitting still than chasing after. Chasing
- I was a late child from my parents, so I grew up surrounded by people a lot older than me. I think even when I… Child
- He watched a catbird hopping around in an azalea that was readying itself to bloom; he envied the bird for knowing nothing of what he… Air
- Our visual cortexes are wired to quickly recognize faces and then quickly subtract massive amounts of detail from them, zeroing in on their essential message:… Abstract
- I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm… Along
- Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists. Artist
- The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator. Adversaries
- When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness… Actually Seemed
- The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. Background
- It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security… Council
- It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's… Attention
- If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very… Behave
- I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to… Beats
- I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second. Approximately
- I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994. Both
- I look at my father, who was in many ways an unhappy person, but who, not long before he got sick, said that the greatest… Been
- I hate that word dysfunction. Dysfunction
- I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously… Among
- But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny. Barry
- And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book. Book
- The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read: where to find the energy to engage… Consists
- I try to write things that can't be made into movies. My novels have thwarted many attempts to film them and I think that was… Actually Tried
- I think we live in an era of problems that, if you step back and look at them globally, can't be solved. One response to… All