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Jonathan Franzen Quotes

Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage Picture Quote #1

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 true of the essay, too. If you’d actually tried to be true to the essay, it would have been, perhaps, boring. So taking that narrow little cast of characters and expanding it out, that was what was exciting about the project for me Picture Quote #1

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 a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture? Picture Quote #1

The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world Picture Quote #1

She was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like Picture Quote #1

There’s a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else’s work in the morning; it’s as if stillness experiences pain in being broken Picture Quote #1

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There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it’s the right unhappiness Picture Quote #1

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart Picture Quote #1

He couldn’t figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up Picture Quote #1

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage Picture Quote #1

I can’t stomach any kind of notion that serious fiction is good for us, because I don’t believe that everything that’s wrong with the world has a cure Picture Quote #1

If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life Picture Quote #1

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Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it Picture Quote #1

It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value Picture Quote #1

And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Picture Quote #1

Being dead’s only a problem if you know you’re dead, which you never do because you’re dead! Picture Quote #1

To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can’t really multitask reading a book Picture Quote #1

Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don’t see how you could stand it psychologically Picture Quote #1

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Once there are good sentences on the page, I can feel a loyalty to them and start following their logic, and take refuge from myself Picture Quote #1

Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money Picture Quote #1

It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction Picture Quote #1

Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find Picture Quote #1

The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself Picture Quote #1

This wasn’t the person he’d thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he’d been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones Picture Quote #1

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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 next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive’s sake Picture Quote #1

I don’t watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I’m reading at the moment ‘Freedom,’ by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I’m loving it Picture Quote #1

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Friendship Quotes

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Text Quotes

Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) 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 true of the essay, too. If you’d actually tried to be true to the essay, it would have been, perhaps, boring. So taking that narrow little cast of characters and expanding it out, that was what was exciting about the project for me (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) 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 a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture? (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) She was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) There’s a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else’s work in the morning; it’s as if stillness experiences pain in being broken (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it’s the right unhappiness (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) He couldn’t figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) I can’t stomach any kind of notion that serious fiction is good for us, because I don’t believe that everything that’s wrong with the world has a cure (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) Being dead’s only a problem if you know you’re dead, which you never do because you’re dead! (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can’t really multitask reading a book (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don’t see how you could stand it psychologically (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) Once there are good sentences on the page, I can feel a loyalty to them and start following their logic, and take refuge from myself (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) 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 Quotes) It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) This wasn’t the person he’d thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he’d been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive’s sake (Jonathan Franzen Quotes) I don’t watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I’m reading at the moment ‘Freedom,’ by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I’m loving it (Jonathan Franzen Quotes)

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