Bookshelves Quote by Jonathan Franzen

“[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.” quote by Jonathan Franzen — Download Open image

“[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.”

Jonathan Franzen

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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 like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being…

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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 some brilliant retooling over the ages and could now be found living in the form of orioles in the sycamores across the street. As solutions to the problem of earthly existence, the dinosaurs had been pretty…

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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 no, it can’t. There is some reasonable chance, however, that it could save your soul. If you’re unhappy about the hatred that’s been unleashed in your heart, you might try imagining what it’s like to be…

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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 states of mind as 'diseased.' A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one…

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

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“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.”

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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…

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“It was this motley band of modest peeps and plovers on the beach who reminded me of the human beings I loved best - the ones who didn't fit in. These birds may or may not have been capable of emotion, but the way they looked, beleaguered there, few in number, my outcast friends, was how I felt. I'd been…

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I have a nice bookshelf in my office, but not my house. I'm crass, but not that crass.

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...Mr. Wodehouse is a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his…

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You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's…

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If I walk into a place, a party, say, and there's a bookshelf, I immediately gravitate toward it. Unless there's a bar. But even then, it's only a matter of a few rounds before I make my way to the bookshelf. If there are good books on it, I may never leave the spot all night. Anybody I really want…

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I source images and ideas from different parts of my experiences, and sometimes they are things that are made-up, or just appear out of…

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The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you…

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“If I am alive this is my book, and my father lives now in the afterlife that is a book, a thing not vague or virtual but something you can hold and feel and smell because to my mind heaven like life must be a thing sensual and real. And my book will be a river and have the Salmon…

Niall Williams