“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.”
“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
“I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled.”
Francine Prose“She emerges from the station directly across from the restaurant. And she's right on time. Like magic, Sonya thinks, briefly saddened to realize that this is what magic means now: not being late, not getting lost on the subway. Whatever happened to the fairy godmothers, to all those bunnies yanked out of hats?”
Francine Prose“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“Every song may be someone's personal implement of torture.”
Francine Prose, Goldengrove“And there was that trick he did with time, making it speed up when we were together and drag til I saw him again.”
Francine Prose, Goldengrove“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“He claimed to be a Marxist, the only one of his claims I believed. He had that Marxist passion for oysters and good Sancerre, and that Marxist paralysis when the waiter brought the check. Already it’s obvious how much the Communists got wrong, overbetting on human high-mindedness, lowballing human desire.”
Francine Prose, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932“But love is strange, as they used to say at the Chameleon Club. Even those of us who value intelligence over appearance have discovered, to our chagrin, that a high IQ doesn't necessarily translate into kindness or even conscience.”
Francine Prose, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932“Throughout her life, she behaved as if she had never heard anyone suggest that a woman couldn't do entirely as she pleased.”
Francine Prose, The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired“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 ThemAll in One Creative & Marketing Platform to tell stories at scale
