Jonathan Franzen Quotes - Page 5

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• 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

  Eye, Boys, Blue

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.263, Macmillan

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• I had a Viking sense of entitlement to whatever provisions I could plunder.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Vikings, Entitlement, Provision

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History”, p.3, Macmillan

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• Everything he did was at least partial and often total bullshit” (402).

  Jonathan Franzen

  Bullshit

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.402, Macmillan

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• Remind me again what's wrong with Dave Matthews?" "Basically everything, except technical proficiency," Walter said. "Right." "But maybe especially the banality of the lyrics. 'Gotta be free, so free, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't live without my freedom, yeah yeah.' That's pretty much every song.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Song, Dave, Yeah

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.145, Macmillan

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• [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

  Religious, Grace, Hats

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.57, Macmillan

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• It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Uncles, Healthy, Bones

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• Use well thy freedom.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Use, Wells

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.184, Macmillan

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• It took hours to turn the clock back 30 seconds.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Regret, Hours, Clock

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• 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

  Self, People, Things Change

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• As with all forms of liberation, of which the liberation of women is only one example, it is easy to suppose in a time of freedom that the darker days of repression can never come again.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Example, Easy, Form

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• Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Moving, Perspective, Littles

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.383, Macmillan

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• Robin turned and looked straight into her. "What's life for?" "I don't know." "I don't either. But I don't think it's about winning.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Thinking, Winning, Robins

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The corrections”

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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 sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Government, Self, Data

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.444, Macmillan

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• Deploring other people--their lack of perfection--had always been our sport.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Sports, People, Perfection

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History”, p.167, Macmillan

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• But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Thinking, Dave, Yeah

  "The Passion of the Oprah" by Macy Halford, www.newyorker.com. September 17, 2010.

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• 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

  Light, Age, Cost

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.462, Macmillan

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• Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Interesting, Verbs

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Jonathan Franzen, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• 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

  Summer, Short Life, Self

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History”, p.181, Macmillan

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• When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Struggle, Writing, Mean

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• I feel that working environmentalists are, in the main, happier than armchair environmentalists.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Armchairs, Environmentalist, Feels

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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.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Opposites, Games, Alive

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• Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Thinking, World, Talent

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

  Jonathan Franzen

  Integrity, Hyenas, Pure

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.230, Macmillan

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• The pain was quite extraordinary. And yet also weirdly welcome and restorative, bringing him news of his aliveness and his caughtness in a story larger than himself.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Pain, News, Stories

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• Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence -- the drama of being her -- was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Drama, Eye, Challenges

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.194, Macmillan

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