391 Quotes by Jonathan Franzen

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

Plus. she’d already been downstairs for so long that it would be unpleasant to go up and beg Jason for further patience, and her life was already so fraught with unpleasantnesses that she’d adopted the strategy of delaying encounters with them as long as possible, even when the delay made it likely that they would be even more unpleasant when she did encounter them.

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

A child who’s got the habit will start reading under the covers with a flashlight,” she said. “If the parents are smart, they’ll forbid the child to do this, and thereby encourage her. Otherwise she’ll find a peer who also has the habit, and the two of them will keep it a secret between them.

Stupidity mistook itself for intelligence, whereas intelligence knew its own stupidity.

The guiding principle of Martin’s personality, the sum of his interior existence, was the desire to be left alone. If all those years he’d sought attention, even novelty, and if he still relished them, then that was because attention proved him different and solitude begins in difference.

Impossibility is attractive.

He couldn’t figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.

This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of “I”. I can’t stop it. I’m writing this.