The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, w…

- Jonathan Franzen

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. Bu…

- Jonathan Franzen

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I …

- Jonathan Franzen

Without privacy there was no point in being an individual.

- Jonathan Franzen

But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.

- Jonathan Franzen

Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest.

- Jonathan Franzen

This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating…

- Jonathan Franzen

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

- Jonathan Franzen

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.

- Jonathan Franzen