Jonathan Franzen Quotes

there are few things harder to imagine than other people’s conversations about yourself.

It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.

And yet the feeling of injustice itself turned out to be strangely physical. Even realer, in a way, than a her hurting, smelling, sweating body. Injustice had a shape, an a weight, and a temperature, and a texture, and a very bad taste.

Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan.

There was no arguing with blood.

Pip wondered what the secret was of being different in a way that attracted people, as opposed to her own way.

He was certifiably insane, an Ayn Rander who fancied himself an Übermensch and “the Singularity’s chosen avatar,

How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.