Quotes from Jonathan Franzen

He'd lost track of what he wanted, and since who a person was was what a person wanted, you could say that he'd lost track of himself.

Self-pity seeped into her, a conviction that for no one but her was sex so logistically ungainly, a tasty fish with so many small bones.

he remembered how it would feel to be unmoved by the stores, unwanting of anything in them, and how much dimmer the lights

He'd realized only recently that at the center of the act of sitting down was a loss of control, a blind backwards free fall.

Nowhere is more nowhere than this place, I agree.

Happy people didn't tell lies.

that people were cruel to what they were afraid of loving.

Her face and hair were on the verge of confirming a wicked little dictum of Leila's: Blondes don't age well. (Leila saw middle age as the Revenge of the Brunettes.)

Infinitesimally soon, the eternity of his own death would commence and render all of this unreal.

She was right for him, he was right for her, but they couldn't find a way to be together.

With whiskey, the capillary bloom was more diffusely rosy than with gin and less purple than with wine. Every university dinner party was a study in blooms.

el amor verdadero altera el mundo del tecnoconsumismo, y a éste no le queda más remedio que alterar, a su vez, el amor.

You on the floor in a fugue state, me not knowing what to do. It's remarkable how high-functioning you are, for an insane person. I'm the only one who gets to see you on the floor.

When he happened to look at Marion directly, it was often to ask, "Where's your sister?

If I were fashioning my own killer argument against the digital revolution, I'd begin with the observation that both Newt Gingrich and Timothy Leary are crazy about it.

Einar had been attracted to the Communist notion that his labor was being exploited by East Coast capitalists. Then one day, listening to a Communist fulminate in Pioneer Square, he'd had a eureka moment in which he realized that the way to get ahead in his new country was to exploit some labor himself.

Science and delusion had no ground in common.

Si uno dedica su existencia a gustar, y si adopta la imagen atractiva necesaria para ello, sea la que sea, se suele creer que uno ha desistido de ser querido por ser quien es en realidad. Y si uno consigue manipular a los demás para gustarles, será difícil no sentir cierto desprecio por esas personas, ya que han caído en el engaño.

All of a sudden I became aware of how very hungry I was to construct and inhabit an imagined world.

La differenza è che gli uccelli uccidono solo perché devono mangiare. Non lo fanno con rabbia, non lo fanno senza motivo. Non è una cosa nevrotica. Per me è questo che rende la natura un luogo pacifico. Le cose vivono o non vivono, ma non esiste il veleno del risentimento, della nevrosi e dell'ideologia. È un sollievo dalla mia rabbia nevrotica.

ticklers bearing down on Kim Perkins, David Goya pissed off at them.

young gentleman with whom she's been osculating on

After she died and Becky's mother pronounced her judgment, Becky understood what a survival mechanism disdain had been for her aunt, who had few other defenses against an uncaring world. For Becky herself, disdain was more of an emergency measure, taken only when someone directly tried to make her feel bad.

Her body looked to be only a healthy diet and some regular exercise away from greatness