“He was a lifelong prisoner on the island of himself. What looked like gentle contours from a distance were in fact sheer cliffs. Sometimes only a little of him was crazy, sometimes nearly all of him, but, as an adult, he was never entirely not crazy. What he'd seen of his id while trying to escape his island prison by way of drugs and alcohol, only to find himself even more imprisoned by addiction, seems never to have ceased to be corrosive of his belief in his lovability. Even after he got clean, even decades after his late-adolescent suicide attempt, even after his slow and heroic construction of a life for himself, he felt undeserving.”
More from Jonathan Franzen
“Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing…”
“You have to love before you can be relentless.”
“The internet is all about destroying the elite, destroying the gatekeepers. The people…”
“I wanted all of her and resented other boys for wanting any part of her.”