I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second. Jonathan Franzen More Quotes by Jonathan Franzen More Quotes From Jonathan Franzen Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of talks they'd had when he was younger: to get her to shut up, to train her to contain herself, to make her stop pestering him with her overfull heart and her uncensored self. And now that the training was complete and she was obediently trivial with him, he felt bereft of her and wanted to undo it. Jonathan Franzen selfheartyears 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 alivegamesopposites Birds were like dinosaurs' better selves. They had short lives and long summers. We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs. Jonathan Franzen short-lifeselfsummer I admire your capacity for admiring. Jonathan Franzen admiringadmirecapacity Deploring other people--their lack of perfection--had always been our sport. Jonathan Franzen perfectionsportspeople 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 then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction-no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy's disgust. Jonathan Franzen eyeblueboys I wanted all of her and resented other boys for wanting any part of her. Jonathan Franzen wantedboys The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life. Jonathan Franzen background-musicbackgroundskind You see more sitting still than chasing after. Jonathan Franzen sitting-stillchasingstills 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 was 21, I felt like I was a 70-year-old man. Jonathan Franzen pregnancymenchildren 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 knew; he would have swapped souls with it in a heartbeat. And then to take wing, to know the air's buoyancy even for an hour: the trad was a no-brainer, and the catbird, with its lively indifference to him, its sureness of physical selfhood, seemed well aware of how preferable it was to be the bird. Jonathan Franzen azaleasknowing-nothingair The figure of my father looms large in my imagination. Jonathan Franzen figuresimaginationfather 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 doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly. Jonathan Franzen shapeswritingthinking 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 writingadventurefiction It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated. Jonathan Franzen readingwritingbook 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 logicpagesloyalty The world was ending then, it's ending still, and I'm happy to belong to it again. Jonathan Franzen stillsworld 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: Is this person happy? Angry? Fearful? Individual faces may vary greatly, but a smirk on one is a lot like a smirk on another. Smirks are conceptual, not pictorial. Our brains are like cartoonists - and cartoonists are like our brains, simplifying and exaggerating, subordinating facial detail to abstract comic concepts. Jonathan Franzen detailsessentialsbrain 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 ifsworldyears It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die. Jonathan Franzen things-changeselfpeople
