391 Quotes by Jonathan Franzen

'The Man Who Loved Children,' Christina Stead's masterpiece, remains the most fabulous book that hardly anyone I know has read.

To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.

I think cultures of conformity produce vast quantities of shame, both in people who simply can't conform and people who do conform, but underneath, they're not feeling conformist.

Manhattan is just all bank branches.

If you have not had direct firsthand experience of loving a category of person - a person of a different race, a profoundly religious person, things that are real stark differences between people - I think it is very hard to dare, or necessarily even want, to write fully from the inside of a person.

I know what paranoia is like. I know what it is like to worry about what people are saying about you and become obsessed with what people are saying about you.

I don't even read positive reviews unless they are absolutely certified by eight different people to not contain one thing that could upset me.

Most of the people who have complaints with me aren't reading me.

A big part of me would be very proud never having anything of mine adapted, because if you want the real experience, there's only one way to get it. You're going to actually have to be a reader.