“Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.”
Author detail
Jonathan Earl Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel *The Corrections* drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel *Freedom* (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of *Time* magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen has contributed to *The New Yorker* magazine since 1994. His 1996 Harper's essay *Perchance to Dream* bemoaned the state of contemporary literature. Oprah Winfrey's book club selection in 2001 of *The Corrections* led to a much publicized feud with the talk show host.
Quotes
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“Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.”
“Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imaginati...”
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“He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike purity. If love is nevertheless excluded from his work, it's because he never quite felt that...”
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“It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”
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“Patty believed that parents have a duty to teach their children how to recognize reality when they see it.”
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“It took hours to turn the clock back 30 seconds.”
“Încep să cred că paradisul nu e o mulțumire veșnică. Ci ma degrabă o stare de mulțumire care face totul să pară veșnic. Nu există viață veșnică pentru că n-o să câștigi niciodată cursa cu ti...”
“Her life would have been easier if she hadn't loved him so much, but she couldn't help loving him. Just to look at him was to love him.”
“You're either reading a book or you're not.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.”
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“I'm not fussy about my food.”
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“And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book.”
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“The technology I like is the American paperback edition of 'Freedom.' I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology.”
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“The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need.”
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“One reason that birds matter - ought to matter - is that they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding. They're the most vivid and widespread representativ...”
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“It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die.”
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