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Francine Prose Biography

Francine Prose (born April 1, 1947) is 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.

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Francine Prose Quotes

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.

Academics, Army, Plotting, Survived, White, Zombie

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.

Character, Conclusion, Employ, Expression, Mean, People

To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies. The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own—a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.

Art, Dead, Differences, Light, Though

But if I were asked to pick one constant, one quality that seems dependable, immutable, endlessly available, I'd say that it was intensity. For nothing in Sicily seems withheld, done half way, restrained or suppressed. There's nothing to correspond to say, the ironic, the cerebral remove at which a Frenchman might consider an idea or a question, or the Scandinavian distrust of the sloppy, emotive response.

Available, Constant, Ideas, Ironic, Quality, Remove

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph. D. program was trying to make me forget. Thank you, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Hundred, Novel, Reminded, School, Thank You, Years

When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal.

Goal, Impression, Information, Make, Speak

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.

Choices, Choosing, Elements, Skills, Writing

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.

Bereavement, Kept, Mystery Of Death, Riddle, Speak, Trying

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

Crafted, Literature, Material, Materials, Raw, Raw Materials

Traditionally, the love of reading has been born and nurtured in high school English class

Class, Love, Reading, School

People see everything through the lens of their obsessions.

Lenses, Obsession, Obsessions, People, See

I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.

Four, Journalism, Novel, Novels

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.

Army, Manages, Night, Particular, Possibility, War

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.

Become, Book, Found, Might, Reading, Someday

You aim for what you want and if you don't get it, you don't get it, but if you don't aim, you don't get anything.

Aim, Self Knowledge, Want

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.

Children, Encountering, Handwriting, Inspire, Like

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

Effective, Literature, Occasions, Showing, Telling

Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.

Class, Ethics, Important, Manual, Self

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.

Book, Children, Floor, Grief, Home, Sitting

I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.

Board, Kids, Loss, Remember, Sports

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Francine Prose Biography

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