Francine Prose > Quotes

“I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing down and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was reproof. Shouldn't I feel better than I had in the dead of night.”
― Francine Prose, Goldengrove

“The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.”
― Francine Prose, Goldengrove

“People see everything through the lens of their obsessions.”
― Francine Prose, Goldengrove

“We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.”
― Francine Prose

“What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his wife in the attic." -Angela Argo "Blue Angel”
― Francine Prose

“To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies.
The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own—a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.”
― Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“We don't know what we'd do. Nobody knows what accident of fate or DNA character will determine how we act when the shit hits the fan.”
― Francine Prose, Guided Tours of Hell: Novellas

“Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.”
― Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.”
― Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“I'm out of the equation, an innocent bystander at the major love affair Joan is having with Joan”
― Francine Prose, Touch

“[It] began to seem amazing how often it was assumed that having a vagina automatically meant I was less intelligent, talented, capable, and interesting than the world's least interesting human being who happened to have a penis.”
― Francine Prose

“Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.”
― Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.”
― Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Like, for example, sleeve length. Should he hide the tattoos? Or just wear a T-shirt and let "them" do the talking? If one picture's worth a thousand words, that's the first two thousand right there, two thousand minus the hi howareya nicetameetcha. ”
― Francine Prose

“A woman would have to be crazy to marry, or even have sex with, a man who would prosecute every lover’s quarrel like a criminal case”
― Francine Prose, My New American Life