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
-
We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.
-
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.
-
I love Coco de Mer.
-
Commercials capture your attention, that's all.
-
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?
-
Remember Tupperware? That was the toughest stuff ever. Why can't they make a phone out of Tupperware?
-
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!
-
It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.
-
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.
-
Wit is cultured insolence.
-
I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them.
-
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
-
A good man likes a hard boss. I don't mean a nagging boss or a grouchy boss. I mean a boss who insists on things being done right and on time; a boss who is watching things closely enough so that he knows a good job from a poor one. Nothing is more discouraging to a good man than a boss who is not on the job, and who does not know whether things are going well or badly.
-
I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.
-
The minimum wage now in our country, I think we've set that, so there are a lot of people have benefited from it in our country, but I think we ought to review how much it ought to be, and whether or not we ought to have increases in the minimum wage.
-
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.
