Francine Prose
Francine Prose
Francine Proseis an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 April 1947
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
character mean expression
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...
reading school class
Traditionally, the love of reading has been born and nurtured in high school English class
reading elements eating-alone
Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.
thinking literature strange
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.
beautiful believe matter
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.
people lenses obsession
People see everything through the lens of their obsessions.
morning loss feel-better
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.
bereavement trying mystery-of-death
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.
literature raw-materials materials
Words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
writing garden rose
If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way that a rose gardener would.
literature occasions
There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.
writing facts fiction
Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction.
army white zombie
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.
children book grief
I can no more reread my own books than I can watch old home movies or look at snapshots of myself as a child. I wind up sitting on the floor, paralyzed by grief and nostalgia.