Jonathan Franzen

"An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970."

"... idea of what books and literature are for ... serious fiction ... It is for people who may be a little isolated ... may be isolated by the very fact that they like to read books. And that my job really is to participate in that community and make that human connection. So, I went from trying to impress people or change them ... to just trying to make that connection."

"... The struggle to rein in s and keep the planet from melting down has the feel of Kafka’s fiction. The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it. If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope."

"A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life thats free, which means the person has to spend even more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental health is the ability to participate in the consumer economy. When you buy into therapy, youre buying into buying."

"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, its just not permanent enough. ...its going to be very hard to make the world work if theres no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government."

"Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular."

"Todays Baudelaires are hip-hop artists."

"In the years when hed worked full-time, hed never complained about frozen or takeout or preprepared dinners. To Caroline it probably seemed that he was changing the rules on her. But to Gary it seemed that the nature of family life itself was changing - that togetherness and filiality and fraternity werent valued the way they were when he was young."

"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 dont see how you could stand it psychologically."

"Nobody can ever quite say whats wrong exactly. But they all know its evil. They all know corporate is a dirty word. And if somebodys having fun or getting rich - disgusting! Evil! And its always the death of this and the death of that. And people who think theyre free arent really free. And people who think theyre happy arent really happy. And its impossible to radically critique society anymore, although whats so radically wrong with society that we need such a radical critique, nobody can say exactly.... Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color, and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think about is some stupid, lame problem with signifiers and signifieds."

"Its who I am. Put somebody elses comfort ahead of my own? Go hop in a toilet to spare somebody elses feelings? Thats the kinda thing you do, fella. You got everything bass ackwards. And look where its landed you. Other people ought to have more consideration. You oughtta have less. Me personally, I am opposed to all strictures. If you feel it, let it rip. If you want it, go for it. Dudes gotta put his own interests first."

"All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didnt have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?"