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61 " Don’t come to Paris if you’re planning a solitary hike through a sexual desert. "
― Francine Prose , Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
62 " Don’t order boeuf bourguignon if you’re a vegetarian, don’t venture into the tearooms if you don’t like ladies with lapdogs. Don’t come to Paris if you’re planning a solitary hike through a sexual desert. "
63 " Hemingway should have stayed in the Midwest. He ruined things for the rest of us, telling all those lies. The lie about courage, the lie about every red-blooded male needing to kill a bull or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. "
64 " One: See the two of them everywhere. Contemplate suicide. Would it seem too tourist-y to jump off the Eiffel Tower? "
65 " Two: Distract yourself. Paris has something for everyone. Let’s imagine you are feeling slightly disenchanted with women. Dozens of places will persuade you that a beautiful woman is nothing more than a beautiful man in a dress. "
66 " But did I ever get over her? She came to symbolize everything I wanted and would never have. "
67 " Many people have a gift for language that flows when they are talking and dries up when they are confronted with the blank page, "
― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
68 " You think, Fuck it. The guy’s a genius. He deserves her. What is a woman, after all? You are alive and in Paris. "
69 " Yes to it all. I had become a puppy that stands on its hind legs and barks when its master fetches its leash. "
70 " I was only pretending to be the underpaid, duplicitous, ineffective, struggling teacher of immigrant French. The real Suzanne was the lover and muse of a brilliant artist. "
71 " I wanted to know what he thought about my loving a man whose bills were being paid by another woman. "
72 " I was trying to communicate—with nothing so obvious as a smile, but let’s say a smile of the eyes—my admiration for the chic of women in tuxedos escorting women in evening gowns. "
73 " If I were like Lionel, I would write a book: Obvious Lies, Bad Advice, and Wrong Information I’ve Gotten from Men. A book? An encyclopedia! But in this case my friend was right. "
74 " Staying awake seemed like a gift until, as so often happens with gifts, it became a burden. "
75 " How ashamed most of us would be, if we were reminded of some past behavior, some attitude that we maintained while under the delusion that we were in love—and were loved in return. "
76 " In part what made the club such a haven was its power to make each person feel temporarily less alone. "
77 " She told me the French expression [Esprit de l'escalier]—the spirit of the staircase—for the voice that catches up with you, minutes after the fact, to make fun of whatever you said and come up with the perfect answer you didn't think of. We even had our own code phrase: SOS, we called it. "
― Francine Prose , Goldengrove
78 " Anne tells him that his silence is, in a way, like her chatter. "
― Francine Prose , Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife
79 " But briefly, Theresa’s case has been diagnosed as one of acute hallucinatory psychosis, brought on by a particularly difficult and prolonged adolescent psychosexual adjustment, no doubt aggravated by a somewhat obsessional religious nature. What that means in layman’s terms is—as I’m sure you know—Theresa has temporarily lost touch with what we call reality. "
― Francine Prose , Household Saints
80 " from the earliest passages to the diary’s final entry, in which she talks about her “dual personality,” the lighthearted, superficial side that lies in wait to ambush and push away her “better, deeper, and purer” self. "