Jonathan Franzen Quotes

The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.

Like you and your woman ain't gettin' along and you're in love. You can't sleep at nights. Your mind is on her - on whatever. You know, that's the blues. You can't hug that money at night. You can't kiss it.

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

Your desires are immense, almost infinite. Because of your desires life becomes a competition, and wherever there is competition, there is anxiety and angst; and at the end everybody is aware deep down there is death.

to live means to lack something at every moment

It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

I had a question asked of me the other day, and this is asked of me a lot, surprisingly. 'Is there anything you want that you can't have?' And I said, 'Of course! What kind of question is this? Of course there is.' There's any number of things that I would like to have that I either can't afford or it doesn't make sense to buy. You know, I'd love to have world peace.

Desires going before conversion are not such as can calm a storming conscience.

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

We are born to live, we are born to understand, we are born to carry a cursed pattern and be transformed by pain.

...all enjoyment is dependent upon the frailty of human life and human desires ... if we were to have all we want and to live forever, all enjoyment would be gone.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.

Some men have sighed over the abduction of their wives, but many more have sighed because no one wanted to abduct theirs.

The answer to the nature of our existence is somewhere in the middle, and that, of course, is what we're looking for: how to see ourselves in a new picture of ourselves and understand the questions that humans have asked forever, "Who are we, how did we get here, where are we going, and what's the nature of this reality that we're in?"

When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. Only desire trumps time.

Being a human means waking up in this world, where we all have to work and slog to put food on the table.

Beautiful women are the torment of my existence.

Count not thyself to have found true peace, if thou hast felt no grief; nor that then all is well if thou hast no adversary; nor that this is perfect, if all things fall out according to thy desire.

True fighters dare face the sorrows of humanity, and look unflinchingly at bloodshed. What sorrow and joy are theirs! But the Creator's common device for ordinary people is to let the passage of time wash away old traces leaving only pale-red bloodstains and a vague pain; and he lets men live on ignobly and amid these, to keep this quasi-human world going.

I mean, after all, you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

Music is only a means to an end - it is not the end. The concern is with the condition of man

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles - whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled - is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.

There is no greater offence than harbouring desires. There is no greater disaster than discontent. There is no greater misfortune than wanting more.