Jonathan Franzen Quotes

Reading has been the fuel of my motivation: it has changed the direction in which I have traveled, and it has enhanced my creative imagination more than any other activity I have ever pursued.

I can't imagine not being in a phase where I'm trying to understand something or create something. That's the essence of life.

I think that we all absolutely have curiosity. It brings about knowledge. It's energizing. It's spiritually empowering. It makes us more interesting as people.

One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer.

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.

You want to know what makes me tick, I'll tell you what makes me tick. I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn; I read a two-penny magazine called 'The Hawk's Nest.' Nobody entered that nest that didn't leave a little richer and a little wiser. And that 11-year-old boy said, 'Isn't that a wonderful thing.' And that's all there is to it.

Books are challenging and inspirational to me.

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.

A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.

And where does magic come from? I think that magic's in the learning.

I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise.

To learn something new every day is still exciting!

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

The older I get, the more my curiosity grows, and every book I write is a new exploration.

When I got large enough to go to work, while employed I was reflecting on many things that would present themselves to my imagination; and whenever an opportunity occurred of looking at a book, when the school-children were getting their lessons, I would find many things that the fertility of my own imagination had depicted to me before.

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.

If there's a 13- or 14-year old kid who is yearning for something beyond the social forces in his own world, in his own neighborhood, the library is the only place where he can go to find that. It was exciting and thrilling to me all the time I worked in the library. It's such a force for social good and it can do so much.

Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.

I think reading is important for a variety of things. I mean, first of all, it's a way to get information and find out what's going on in the world. But also, it helps your imagination.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

I'm passionate about learning. I'm passionate about life.

When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

For a child, reading a book can be such an intense experience.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Learning is the new skill. Imagination, creation and asking new questions are at its core.