Jonathan Franzen Quotes

I was as eager a writer as I was a reader.

I had a vision of myself as a novelist because that was where I could be serious. I couldn't with music.

Poets take themselves very seriously.

Young writers take themselves very seriously in college.

I think that I have every right to write a book. I think I'm interesting. I have perspective about me.

A person's creative ability decreases in direct proportion to the degree to which he takes himself seriously.

I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers.

I was always a keen reader. I jotted down one or two things, but it never occurred to me to think of a job in writing. I thought that writers were like demi-gods. I don't know what I thought.

I've written a lot of prose. I just haven't published it.

I will write another book if I feel like it.

I find it very hard to take myself seriously.

Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously.

Although I don't take myself very seriously, I do take my work extraordinarily seriously.

I don't even know how to define myself. I'm a person who writes. It's something I enjoy, and hopefully people enjoy it as well.

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

I probably could be a world-class screenwriter by now if I had spent the kind of work I devote on Comedy Death-Ray to that. But I do okay, in that regard. I mean, my stuff gets bought, so it's all right.

I own and operate a ferocious ego.

I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.

I don't think anyone in their right mind takes me serious.

I just don't take myself as seriously anymore. But as a result of that, I am taking myself more seriously. My ego has gone on holiday, and it can't get a flight back home.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

I thought I was God's gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.