Jonathan Franzen Quotes

I reached a point where I'd watched enough directors do the job that I felt I understood it. And it's not that I'm a slow learner and it took me this long; I also was enjoying writing, and I still enjoy writing - I get tremendous satisfaction out of the writing end of it.

My first novel was a challenge to myself. No one had an inkling that I was working on it.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I have dreamt of being an author since the age of 14, and writing about my experiences has always been a part of digesting an experience and sharing it with others.

For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel.

I spend about a year between novels.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

The only thing that remained consistent over the years was my ability and enthusiasm to tell the story.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

I don't read books regularly, because I'm always writing them. I've written 30 books, thousands of pages.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

I wrote that letter, and the one to Nixon. And I wrote more letters, and I thought it might be a magazine article. At that time I sent it to Esquire and Playboy, but anyway, I kept writing, and all of sudden I had enough and thought, well maybe it is a book.

In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.

I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

I'm a mother of a three-year-old, but when I started 'California,' my son wasn't even a twinkle in my eye. Because the book took as long as it did, I wrote it before I was pregnant, while I was pregnant, and as a new mother - so I enjoyed a diversity of experiences while creating this world.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.