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Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them QUOTES

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

2 " With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

3 " A neighbor once told me he had trouble with García Márquez’s novel because he likes to drink while he reads, and 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' gave him no space in which to take a sip of his beer. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

4 " Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I knew I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as well as the answer to those who say that books will disappear. For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on a bus. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

5 " 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. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

6 " 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. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

7 " [Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out -- don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy -- when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

8 " Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

9 " What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

10 " the truth is that grammar is always interesting, always useful. Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

11 " Every so often I'll hear writers say that there are other writers they would read if for no other reason than to marvel at the skill with which they can put together the sort of sentences that move us to read closely, to disassemble and reassemble them, much the way a mechanic might learn about an engine by taking it apart. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

12 " If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way that a rose gardener would. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

13 " It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees—this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

14 " good writing should be grasped at once—in a second. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

15 " Not all great writers may seem great to us, regardless of how often and how hard we try to see their virtues. I know, for example, that Trollope is considered to have been a brilliant novelist, but I’ve never quite understood what makes his fans so fervent. Still, our tastes change as we ourselves change and grow older, and perhaps in a few months or so Trollope will have become my new favorite writer. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

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

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

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

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

18 " 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. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

19 " Like the one-sentence paragraph, the second-person point of view can also make us suspect that style is being used as a substitute for content. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

20 " Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing. "

― Francine Prose , Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them