391 Quotes by Jonathan Franzen

So many Jonathans. A plague of literary Jonathans. If you read only the New York Times Book Review, you’d think it was the most common male name in America. Synonymous with talent, greatness. Ambition, vitality.

He knows how love blinds people to the truth about the one they are in love with.

What made drugs perpetually so sexy was the opportunity to be other. Years after he’d figured out that pot only made him paranoid and sleepless, he still got hard-ons at the thought of smoking it. Still lusted for that jailbreak.

Have you ever been tempted to leave a thought unspoken?” “I’m a writer, baby. Voicing thought is what I’m poorly paid and uncharitably reviewed for.

My first hero was Thomas Edison, whose adult life had consisted entirely of free time.

I feel as if I’m clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously – and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.

If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody’s perfect.

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.

Among novelists I know, no one is more ambitious than I am.