Jonathan Franzen Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.
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Everyone has a crazy old lady in their family like 'Mama.' No one ever comes up to me and says 'Mama' is just like them, so no one is ever offended by her. Even young people like to laugh at her. I think she helps kids appreciate their own grandmothers more.
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I love Coco de Mer.
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Commercials capture your attention, that's all.
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If someone busted into your house and robbed you, would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?
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Remember Tupperware? That was the toughest stuff ever. Why can't they make a phone out of Tupperware?
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I have white hair now, but a lot of it, and I'm still very glamorous, and so I won't disappoint, I hope! I'll still be wearing the tight leather trousers and high-heel boots, regardless of what age!
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It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.
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The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.
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The problem is that in our country, they make it almost impossible for politicians to win anything. In England it's easier to win a libel suit.
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Homunculi are bogeymen only if they duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain. If one can get a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to produce the intelligent behaviour of the whole, this is progress.
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The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.
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The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.
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Wit is cultured insolence.
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I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.
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When the storms of life come, if they come to me personally, to my family or to the world, I want to be strong enough to stand and be a strength to somebody else, be shelter for somebody else.
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I think the lie we've told people in the marketplace is that a degree gets you a job. A degree doesn't get you a job. What gets you a job is the ability to carry yourself into that room and shake a hand and look someone in the eye and have people skills. These are the things that cause people to become successful.
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Would you like to hear a nice definition of jealousy? It's the feeling that you get when someone you absolutely detest is having a wonderful time without you.
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The girls are a complete joy and I love their passion. They argue with me like mad and I love that too.
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Translated books rarely get reviewed in the press. Books or poems or works of art that don't seem to have a corresponding style or figure or theme, obviously they're hard to digest.
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When you're competing, you don't have the choice of what the weather will be like. It really doesn't affect me. I ran one of my fastest times in the New York Diamond League meeting last year. It was raining pretty hard then.
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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.
