If I were ever to go mad it would be on Thanksgiving Day, that day of guilt and grace when the family hangs upon you like an ax over a sacrificial victim, like the oven's heat on that poor bird. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
I think it's one of the reasons I wrote my book later in life. My parents didn't have these extreme alternations of conduct. They… — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
The choice between starving and being eaten is an exotic one. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
All our parents have levels of deviousness. We're driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters… — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
I write because in the act of creation there comes that mysterious, abundant sense of being both parent and child; I am giving birth… — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
“...in Aristotle...leisure is a far more noble, spiritual goal than work...leisure is pursued solely for its own sake...: the pleasures of music and poetry, ... conversation with friends, and ...gratuitous, playful speculation. In Latin, the ultimate good is otium — the opposite is negotium , or gainful work. We have sought too much counsel in the proto-Calvinist work ethic preached… — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share
The irreversibility of time. That's the hardest thing to accept at our age, that's the most violent aspect of death. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
I think we're much more eager to know about our parents than we were in the seventies. — Francine du Plessix Gray Copy Share Image
