Jonathan Franzen - Change Quotes

5 Sourced Quotes

View all Jonathan Franzen Quotes
Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough.... it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.

Jonathan Franzen
Think of the novel as lover: Let's stay home tonight and have a great time; just because you're touched where you want to be touched, it doesn't mean you're cheap; before a book can change you, you have to love it. Or the novelist as cook who prepares, as a gift to the reader, this many-course meal. Not just ice cream, but broccoli rabe as well.

Jonathan Franzen
One of the consolations of dying... Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically.

Jonathan Franzen
And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight— isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before?

Jonathan Franzen
She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.

Jonathan Franzen