Strong Motion Quotes

“It took hours to turn the clock back 30 seconds.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“Yeah, well, we're all grieving in our own way, obviously. It's just I heard this crazy rumor about your having inherited twenty-two million dollars." He tried to meet her eyes, but she'd turned away, squeezing her thumbs, fists balled. "Crazy, huh? But getting back to this lunch, let's see, Mr. Aldren and whatever his name is, Tweedledum, they had steak, right? And Mr. Stoorhuys--" He snapped his fingers. "Rabbit. Half a rabbit, grilled. Or what do you call it? Braised.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“Walking is broken falls, the body leaning, the legs advancing to catch it.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“I don’t think I’m any different than any woman. I mean, any woman who hasn’t had her mind fucked up by male religion.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“The perfect gift for the man who had everything was a quarter-ounce bottle of feminism.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“Because after all,” Bob said, “any wealth gained by a person beyond what he can produce by his own labor must have come at the expense of nature or at the expense of another person. Look around. Look at our house, our car, our bank accounts, our clothes, our eating habits, our appliances. Could the physical labor of one family and its immediate ancestors and their one billionth of the country’s renewable resources have produced all this? It takes a long time to build a house from nothing; it takes a lot of calories to transport yourself from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Even if you’re not rich, you’re living in the red. Indebted to Malaysian textile workers and Korean circuit assemblers and Haitian sugarcane cutters who live six to a room. Indebted to a bank, indebted to the earth from which you’ve withdrawn oil and coal and natural gas that no one can ever put back. Indebted to the hundred square yards of landfill that will bear the burden of your own personal waste for ten thousand years. Indebted to the air and water, indebted by proxy to Japanese and German bond investors. Indebted to the great-grandchildren who’ll be paying for your conveniences when you’re dead: who’ll be living six to a room, contemplating their skin cancers, and knowing, like you don’t, how long it takes to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh when you’re living in the black.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“In a decadent society people can slowly drift or slowly be drawn by the culture of commerce into yearning for violence. Maybe people have a deep congenital awareness that no civilization lasts forever, that the most peaceful prosperity will someday have to end, or maybe it's just human nature”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“And so the thing I hate most is the conservative politician. The conservative side is just pure cynical economic self-interest. Granted it’s pretty realistic about human greed, so it’s fairly grownup, you know, like about the level of a smart-assed thirteen-year-old.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“if there were always at least one good guy waiting in full consciousness for the ground to shake, then there might never be another earthquake, so shy of human consciousness are the random events of nature. (This is the fundamental axiom of superstition.)”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“cheap euphoria smeared across their faces like the juice of sex and peaches, who thought that this was what baseball was about,”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“A person accustoms himself to what he is, after all, and if he’s lucky he learns to hold in somewhat lower esteem all other ways of being, so as not to spend life envying them.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“[...] gli parve di essere sbucato fuori non solo dagli acquitrini, ma anche dalla domenica, e di essere finito tra le dune di un ottavo, anonimo giorno della settimana che lui era l'unica persona al mondo a conoscere.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“Si rese conto di quanto dovessero essere nere le notti nel centro di una città di duecento anni fa [...] e di come gli edifici potessero trovare riposo, ciechi ed esanimi come le persone addormentate al loro interno.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“In effetti quando faceva compere in un grande magazzino i vestiti e gli utensili che non le sembravano connotanti risultavano sempre i più costosi nel loro genere. Chiaramente, se eri abbastanza ricco, potevi comprare la trasparenza.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion

“Πιθανόν να χλεύαζε κάποιον που θα του έλεγε ότι η αγάπη μπορούσε να του διδάξει τις συγκεκριμένες δεξιότητες που συνιστουν την υπομονή και την ευσπλαχνία και σίγουρα όποιον θα έλεγε ότι η αγάπη είναι ένας χρυσός κρίκος που αν τον αδράξεις σε πάει ψηλά, με μια δύναμη συγκρίσιμη μονάχα με τις δυνάμεις της φύσης. Αλλά αυτό ακριβώς ένιωθε τώρα”
― Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion