Frases de Jonathan Franzen

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“Para mí, el azul mediterráneo ya no es bonito. La transparencia de sus aguas, tan valorada por los veraneantes, es la misma que la de una piscina estéril. En sus playas hay pocos olores y pocas aves, y sus profundidades van camino de vaciarse; gran parte del pescado que ahora se consume en Europa procede ilegalmente, sin que nadie indague mucho, del océano del oeste de África. Miro el azul y no veo un mar, sino una postal, fina como un papel.”

“En general, la perspectiva del dolor, el dolor de la pérdida, de la ruptura, de la muerte, es la razón por la que resulta tan tentador eludir el amor y quedarse a salvo en el mundo del gustar”

“Qué hermosa es siempre la cara que no hemos visto.”

“Y se fue.
Y ella se convirtió en mejor lectora.”

“El sol bajo, en el cielo: luminaria menor, estrella enfriándose. Ráfagas de desorden, sucesivas. Árboles inquietos, temperaturas en descenso”

“Esa no era la persona que él creía ser, o la que habría elegido ser si hubiera tenido la libertad de elegir, pero había algo reconfortante y liberador en ser una persona real y definida, y no una colección de personas potenciales y contradictorias.”

“Nuestras vidas parecen mucho más interesantes cuando las filtramos a través de la interfaz sexy de facebook. Somos protagonistas de nuestras propias películas, nos fotografiamos incesantemente, basta un clic del ratón y una maquina nos confirma nuestra sensación de dominio. Y como nuestra tecnología sólo es en realidad una prolongación de nosotros, no tenemos que despreciarla por ser tan manipulable, como podría ocurrirnos con las personas reales. Es un bucle enorme e interminable. Nos gusta el espejo y nosotros le gustamos. Hacerse amigo de una persona se reduce a incluir a esa persona en nuestro salón privado de espejos favorecedores.”

“Si uno dedica su existencia a gustar, y si adopta la imagen atractiva necesaria para ello, sea la que sea, se suele creer que uno ha desistido de ser querido por ser quien es en realidad. Y si uno consigue manipular a los demás para gustarles, será difícil no sentir cierto desprecio por esas personas, ya que han caído en el engaño.”

“No existe nadie cuya personalidad real nos guste hasta la última partícula. Por eso, un mundo donde todo consiste en gustar es en última instancia una mentira. Pero sí existe la persona de cuya personalidad real uno ama hasta la última partícula. Y por eso el amor representa tal amenaza existencial para el orden del tecnoconsumismo: Saca a la luz la mentira”

“(…) el amor verdadero altera el mundo del tecnoconsumismo, y a éste no le queda más remedio que alterar, a su vez, el amor.”

“Cuando te quedas en tu habitación y te encolerizas o adoptas una actitud de desdén o te encoges de hombros, como hice muchos años, el mundo y sus problemas te intimidan de manera extraordinaria. Pero cuando sales y estableces una relación real con personas reales, o incluso con animales reales, existe el peligro muy real de acabar queriendo a alguno de ellos.”

“He wanted this someone to see how much he hurt.”

“The pain was quite extraordinary. And yet also weirdly welcome and restorative, bringing him news of his aliveness and his caughtness in a story larger than himself.”

“Use well thy freedom.”

“Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.”

“It was a way of recognizing places of enchantment: people falling asleep like this.”

“Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.”

“It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”

“One of the consolations of dying… Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically.”

“The taste of self-inflicted suffering, of an evening trashed in spite, brought curious satisfactions. Other people stopped being real enough to carry blame for how you felt. Only you and your refusal remained. And like self-pity, or like the blood that filled your mouth when a tooth was pulled - the salty ferric juices that you swallowed and allowed yourself to savor - refusal had a flavor for which a taste could be acquired.”

“Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists.”

“I’m not the person to ask about what’s normal,’ Denise answered. ‘I’ve mainly seen normal in the rearview mirror.”

“It offended his sense of proportion and economy to throw away a ninety-percent serviceable string of lights. It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value and, by extension, the value of individuals generally: to willfully designate as trash an object that you knew wasn't trash.”

“It's who I am. Put somebody else's comfort ahead of my own? Go hop in a toilet to spare somebody else's feelings? That's the kinda thing you do, fella. You got everything bass ackwards. And look where it's landed you.'
'Other people ought to have more consideration.'
'You oughtta have less. Me personally, I am opposed to all strictures. If you feel it, let it rip. If you want it, go for it. Dude's gotta put his own interests first.”

“An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970.”

“Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.”

“'What's your impression of the ship so far?' she asked. 'Is it really super authentic?'
'Well, it does seem to be floating,' Mr Söderblad said with a smile, 'in spite of heavy seas.'
Enid raised her voice to aid his comprehension. 'I mean, is it AUTHENTICALLY SCANDINAVIAN?'
'Well, yes, of course," Mr. Söderblad said. 'At the same time, everything in the world is more and more American, don't you think?'”

“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough. …it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

“Nobody can ever quite say what's wrong exactly. But they all know it's evil. They all know 'corporate' is a dirty word. And if somebody's having fun or getting rich - disgusting! Evil! And it's always the death of this and the death of that. And people who think they're free aren't 'really' free. And people who think they're happy aren't 'really' happy. And it's impossible to radically critique society anymore, although what's so radically wrong with society that we need such a radical critique, nobody can say exactly…. Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color, and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think about is some stupid, lame problem with signifiers and signifieds.”

“In the years when he'd worked full-time, he'd never complained about frozen or takeout or preprepared dinners. To Caroline it probably seemed that he was changing the rules on her. But to Gary it seemed that the nature of family life itself was changing - that togetherness and filiality and fraternity weren't valued the way they were when he was young.”