Jonathan Franzen

United States
Born on 17 Aug 1959
Novelist/Essayist

Quotes



There�s the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you�re a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself.

Purity
It seemed as if the Internet was governed more by fear: the fear of unpopularity and uncoolness, the fear of missing out, the fear of being flamed or forgotten.

Purity
The American middle-class appetite for illegal drugs provided the capital to build some of the most sophisticated and effective companies on earth.

Purity
Sometimes I think my life is nothing but one long process of bodily betrayal.

Purity
How well aware the body was of what it wanted. How quickly it gleaned the news it could use.

Purity
Life a miserable contradiction, endless desire but limited supplies, your birth just a ticket to your death.

Purity
The New Regime even recycled the old Republic�s buzzwords, collective, collaborative. Axiomatic to both was that a new species of humanity was emerging.

Purity
Don't talk to me about hatred if you haven't been married.

Purity
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays