To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you canโt really multitask reading a book.
Jonathan FranzenSeriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically.
Jonathan FranzenThis evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop it. I'm writing this.
Jonathan FranzenI wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.
Jonathan FranzenWhen 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. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, thereโs a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?
Jonathan Franzen