List of Jonathan Franzen Quotes

I Try To Write Things That Can't Be Made Into Movies. My Novels Have Thwarted Many Attempts To Film Them And I Think That Was True Of The Essay, Too. If You'd Actually Tried To Be True To The Essay, It Would Have Been, Perhaps, Boring. So Taking That Narrow Little Cast Of Characters And Expanding It Out, That Was What Was Exciting About The Project For Me.

I'd Be Surprised If Non-fiction Writers Hate To Be Interviewed. We All Hate Them, Because There's Really Nothing To Say Except "read The Book." Right? At Least With Non-fiction, You Can Kind Of Convey Some Information, And People Can Decide For Themselves Whether They Want More Of That Kind Of Information. But With A Novel, What Am I Going To Do?

I'm Not Too Concerned What Happens To My Books After I'm Dead. But I Am Very Concerned By What's Going On With The Culture Of Reading And Writing Nowadays.

Certain Kinds Of Things That The Novel Used To Do, Which Was, "oh, I'm Living Out Here In West Nowhere, Nebraska And I'm Curious How The Upper Class In New York City Lives, I Guess I'll Read A Novel About It." We Don't Have To Do That Now. You Just Turn On The Tv. Turn On Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous. You Can Get That Information Anywhere. Novels Don't Have To Do That Anymore.

If You're Interested In How People Behave, If You're Interested In The Way They Talk About Themselves, The Way The Conceive Of Themselves, It's Very Hard To Ignore Drugs Nowadays, Because That Is So Much Part Of The Conversation.

Today's Baudelaires Are Hip-hop Artists.

But As Far As Being Popular, Yeah, I Think Dave Barry Is Really Funny.

When I Finally Gave Up Any Hope Of Doing Anything Representative Of The American Family, I Actually Seemed To Have Tapped Into Other People's Weirdness In That Way.

The Mekons Were Kind Of Like The Background Music Of My Life.

It's Very Liberating For Me To Realize That I Don't Have To Step Up To The Plate With A Plot That Involves The U.n. Security Council.

It's Not Surprising To See In My Own Work, Looking Back, And In The Work Of Some Of My Peers, An Attention To Family. It's Nice To Write A Book That Does Tend Toward Significance And Meaning, And Where Else Are You Sure Of Finding It?

I Wrote Two Plotted Books, Got Some Of The Fundamentals Of Storytelling Down, Then... It's Sort Of Like Taking The Training Wheels Off, Trying To Write A Book That's Fun In The Same Way Without Relying On Quite Such Mechanical Or External Beats.