Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsWritingFranzenPeopleWayWorldBookJonathan FranzenFictionSelfThinkingKindNovelKnowsLovePersonsProblemReadingSaidSeems

Famous Jonathan Franzen Quotes

“She wondered: How could people respond to these images if images didn't secretly enjoy the same status as real things? Not that images were so powerful, but that the world was so weak. It could be read, certainly, in its weakness, as on days when the sun baked fallen apples in orchards and the valley smelled like cider, and cold nights when Jordan had driven Chadds Ford for dinner and the tires of her Chevrolet had crunched on the gravel driveway; but the world was fungible only as images. Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.”

PeopleIfsWorldRealNightEnjoyPowerfulSunColdBecomingWeaknessWeakDinnerDrivenFallenApplesValleysTireReal ThingsJordanOrchardGravelDrivewayCiderCold NightChevrolet
Author:Jonathan Franzen
Create image

“Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay...cats were all about using people”

PeopleWorldWayHeartSelfCountryFacesEvilInterestAnimalCatForgivingLaysSpeciesLovelyUnhappyPetOwnersKillersToysNarcissismUniformsMiceStrokesSelf InterestFurFangsTeaseClawsSociopathRodentsTrue HeartUsing PeopleDomesticated Animals
Book:Freedom: A Novel
Create image

“Since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.”

PeopleWayPersonsBigsMightTechnologyMirrorsEndlessLikesHallsContemptNarcissismExtensionsFlatteringLoops
Book:Farther Away
Create image

“When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?”

PeopleKnowsWorldYearsRealEndsProblemMightHappensAnimalRoomsDangerRelationRageShouldersYour RoomSneer
Author:Jonathan Franzen
Create image

“If you read the biographies of people who have written good books, you often see the point where they suddenly come into themselves, and those weeks in the spring of 1997 were when I came into myself as a writer. They feel like some of the best weeks of writing I’ll ever have. The discovery that I could write better about something as trivial as an ordinary family dinner than I could about the exploding prison population of the United States, and the corporatization of American life, and all the other things I’d been trying to do, was a real revelation.”

PeopleIfsFeelsWritingTryingBookRealStatesUnitedUnited StatesWrittenWeekSpringOrdinaryDiscoveryPrisonPopulationDinnerRevelationsBiographiesGood BookAmerican LifeExplodingFamily DinnerPrison Population
Author:Jonathan Franzen
Create image