Francine Prose - Reading Like a Writer (2006)

10 Sourced Quotes

View all Francine Prose Quotes
Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

Francine Prose
Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.

Francine Prose
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
With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.

Francine Prose
Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.

Francine Prose
All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

Francine Prose
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
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
There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.

Francine Prose
Words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Francine Prose