Francine Prose

“I'm out of the equation, an innocent bystander at the major love affair Joan is having with Joan”

— Francine Prose

I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When…

— Francine Prose

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

— Francine Prose

“She emerges from the station directly across from the restaurant. And she's right on time. Like magic, Sonya thinks, briefly saddened to…

— Francine Prose

“Like, for example, sleeve length. Should he hide the tattoos? Or just wear a T-shirt and let "them" do the talking? If…

— Francine Prose

“Consequently, we sympathize. We identify. We care. In fact, most writers would like you to identify”

— Francine Prose

“A woman would have to be crazy to marry, or even have sex with, a man who would prosecute every lover’s quarrel…

— Francine Prose

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have…

— Francine Prose

“I’ve always thought that a close-reading course should at least be a companion, if not an alternative, to the writing workshop. Though…

— Francine Prose

“Not all great writers may seem great to us, regardless of how often and how hard we try to see their virtues.…

— Francine Prose

Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only…

— Francine Prose

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph.D.…

— Francine Prose

“Maybe real love is being able to ask, Do I have greens in my teeth?”

— 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…

— Francine Prose

“The repetitions, meaningless expressions, stammers, and nonsensical monosyllables with which we express hesitation, along with the clichés and banalities that constitute so…

— Francine Prose

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

— Francine Prose

“But briefly, Theresa’s case has been diagnosed as one of acute hallucinatory psychosis, brought on by a particularly difficult and prolonged adolescent…

— Francine Prose

“Every so often I'll hear writers say that there are other writers they would read if for no other reason than to…

— Francine Prose

“And there was that trick he did with time, making it speed up when we were together and drag til I saw…

— Francine Prose

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came…

— Francine Prose

Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some…

— Francine Prose

“[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that…

— Francine Prose

Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction.

— Francine Prose

“I dropped a word from the string of negative adjectives that had trailed behind me like tin cans behind the village idiot.…

— Francine Prose

If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising…

— Francine Prose