Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing. Francine Prose More Quotes by Francine Prose More Quotes From Francine Prose You aim for what you want and if you don't get it, you don't get it, but if you don't aim, you don't get anything. Francine Prose self-knowledge aim want 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 handwriting inspire children 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 feel-better loss morning So perhaps the correct conclusion is that Green was less attuned to how people sound when they speak - the actual words and expressions they employ - than to what they mean. This notion of dialogue as a pure expression of character that...transcends the specifics of time and place may be partly why the conversations in the works of writers such as Austen and Bronte often sound fresh and astonishingly contemporary. Francine Prose expression character mean Traditionally, the love of reading has been born and nurtured in high school English class Francine Prose reading class school What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature. Francine Prose strange literature thinking You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males. Francine Prose zombie army white But beneath it all will run that Sicilian understanding that the underside of joy is grief, that the face of sacrifice and suffering is the dark mirror image of pleasure and enjoyment, that every moment of arrival is to be treasured and enjoyed in the full knowledge that it has brought us a moment closer to the moment of departure. Francine Prose grief dark running I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When I graduated in 1968 it was quite a shock to find out that there was a world out there and that it wasnt going to support me. Francine Prose support college ideas If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out and putting it back in. Francine Prose twelve writing thinking I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism. Francine Prose journalism four novel I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers. Francine Prose dramatic fiction thinking I work really long days and I work seven day weeks. Francine Prose seven-days week long Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction. Francine Prose writing facts fiction Words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Francine Prose raw-materials materials literature 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 mystery-of-death bereavement trying I couldn't imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo. Francine Prose us Long before the idea of a writer's conference was a glimmer in anyone's eye, writers learned by reading the work of their predecessors. They studied meter with Ovid, plot construction with Homer, comedy with Aristophanes; they honed their prose style by absorbing the lucid sentences of Montaigne and Samuel Johnson. Francine Prose style reading work long A work of art can start you thinking about some aesthetic or philosophical problem; it can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction. Francine Prose you work art thinking Of course, I've always read. I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop. I read all the time. Francine Prose old stop always time
