Franzen Freedom Quotes

#1. Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.

Terry Pratchett

#2. Matter is thought, and thought is matter. Nothing exists that cannot be synthesized.

David Mitchell

#3. As with all forms of liberation, of which the liberation of women is only one example, it is easy to suppose in a time of freedom that the darker days of repression can never come again.

Jonathan Franzen

#4. My father was always very interested in space. I watch Star Trek and all those things, but I always had a different picture in my mind ... maybe closer to Alien. I don't see it in space as much as I do see it in different planets, with each having its own strange characters.

Sigourney Weaver

#5. You have my word. If you return with me, you won't be harmed. I'd die first.

Sophie Jordan

#6. Well madam, have you looked in the mirror and seen the state of your nose? Boxing is my excuse. What's yours?

Alan Cooper

#7. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.

Jonathan Franzen

#8. I have always thought that if women's hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald.

Marjane Satrapi

#9. Moreover, something is or seems That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams - "Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare."[228]

William James

#10. My goal was to make first lieutenant. I never spent a lot of time worrying about what came after that.

Hugh Shelton

#11. She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herself for being so free.

Jonathan Franzen

#12. But what a man sees still must depend on what he looks for. While I have eyes of my own, I shall not need to borrow yours.

Barry Unsworth

#13. I use my film-making to work through my deep questions and my deep problems. I think I could watch each film and tell you exactly which part of my psyche I'm trying to work out.

George Clooney

#14. If we rated greatness by the influence of the great, we will say Muhammad is the greatest of the great in history

Will Durant

#15. I enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom.' Would I make that into a film? I think it's better suited to television. That would very much be a dialogue and performance piece, and it would take some very skilful direction - but not my kind of directing. But I thought it was a real literary work.

Peter Weir

#16. Pastries ... can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world.

Muriel Barbery

#17. The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

Jonathan Franzen

#18. I don't watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I'm reading at the moment 'Freedom,' by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I'm loving it.

Nick Clegg

#19. Use well thy freedom.

Jonathan Franzen

#20. Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination new beauties

Timothy Keller

#21. Reality was a bitch, but it cleaned away the fog so you could see the bullshit.

Erosa Knowles