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.

Jonathan Franzen

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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.

  

  J. William Fulbright
  • Power
  • Want
  • Fool

• 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.

  

  Vicki Lawrence
  • People
  • Up
  • Family

• I love Coco de Mer.

  

  Ozwald Boateng
  • Love
  • I Love

• Commercials capture your attention, that's all.

  

  Calvin Klein
  • Attention
  • Your
  • Capture

• 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?

  

  Adam McKay
  • Country
  • Why
  • House

• Remember Tupperware? That was the toughest stuff ever. Why can't they make a phone out of Tupperware?

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Why
  • Remember
  • Phone

• 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!

  

  Kate O'Mara
  • High
  • Hope
  • Age

• It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

  

  Dan Quayle
  • Time
  • Race
  • Solar

• 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.

  

  Major Owens
  • People
  • Society
  • 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.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Country
  • Problem
  • Win

• 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.

  

  Daniel Dennett
  • Team
  • Progress
  • Intelligent

• The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.

  

  Ayn Rand
  • Moral
  • Judge

• He's German so he's Herr Ball. Herr Ball. His movies are so bad, cats choke when they hear his name.

  

  Craig Ferguson
  • Bad
  • German

• 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.

  

  Alastair Reynolds
  • She
  • Energy
  • Simple

• Wit is cultured insolence.

  

  Aristotle
  • Wit
  • Insolence
  • Cultured

• I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.

  

  Fred Wilson
  • Good
  • Free

• 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.

  

  Anne Graham Lotz
  • Life
  • World
  • Family

• The traditional thinking has been that the stock market likes certainty.

  

  Maria Bartiromo
  • Thinking
  • Stock
  • Traditional

• I grew up with the Highwaymen, which was Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Mom and Dad rode rodeo, so country music was always in the house and the car. They threw in some Dolly Parton, too.

  

  Christian Kane
  • Up
  • Music
  • Country

• You can never find the right bowling ball. This one's too heavy. This one's good but its pink!

  

  Jim Gaffigan
  • Balls
  • Heavy
  • Bowling

• Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I had various schemes: one was to be a psychiatrist, another was tropical medicine.

  

  Paul Theroux
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Mind

• I've been offered TV things over the years, but usually, that's about that I don't want to be away from home for that long, because it's a long time to be away your home country and my family.

  

  David Thewlis
  • Time
  • Long
  • Country

• 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