I think we live in an era of problems that, if you step back and look at them … - Jonathan Franzen

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Goodness, real goodness, has it's own sort of cruelty to it.

Jonathan Franzen

I think we live in an era of problems that, if you step back and look at them globally, can't be solved. One response to that is, "Oh well, it's all hopeless. The natural world is getting wrecked, birds are disappearing, the planet is warming and so anything we might do on a smaller scale is meaningless. "

Bird, Birds, Era, Planet, Steps, Thinking

Same Author Quotes

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?

Animal, Loving, Real, Shrug, Years

I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.

Break, Certain, Heart, Things, Thinking, Trying

The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.

Writing, Decision, Scary, Seriously, Point, Read

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

Fiction, Problem, Solitude, Solution

Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.

Ache, Desire, Existence, Forever, Mean, Universe