Scratches Quotes by Francine du Plessix Gray

“A heart of fire in a shell of ice.”

— Francine du Plessix Gray

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

The choice between starving and being eaten is an exotic one.

— Francine du Plessix Gray

“Ah women, women, my life's plague and chief delight!”

— Francine du Plessix Gray

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

Oh, save me God, but not quite yet.

— Francine du Plessix Gray

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

“...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,…

— Francine du Plessix Gray

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

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

We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.

— Francine du Plessix Gray

I think we're much more eager to know about our parents than we were in the seventies.

— Francine du Plessix Gray