Quotes from Francine Prose

I have one outstanding trait in my character, which must strike anyone who knows me for any length of time, and that is my self-knowledge. I can watch myself and my actions, just like an outsider.

Like, for example, sleeve length. Should he hide the tattoos? Or just wear a T-shirt and let them do the talking? If one picture's worth a thousand words, that's the first two thousand right there, two thousand minus the hi howareya nicetameetcha.

Aware of how often she hides her good qualities because she is afraid of being misunderstood or mocked, she accuses herself of being uncharitable, supercilious

I heard he went home to Poughkeepsie and moved back in with his mom.

The repetitions, meaningless expressions, stammers, and nonsensical monosyllables with which we express hesitation, along with the clichés and banalities that constitute so much of everyday conversation, cannot and should not be used when our characters are talking. Rather, they should speak more fluently than we do, with greater economy and certitude.

Many people have a gift for language that flows when they are talking and dries up when they are confronted with the blank page

But love is strange, as they used to say at the Chameleon Club. Even those of us who value intelligence over appearance have discovered, to our chagrin, that a high IQ doesn't necessarily translate into kindness or even conscience.

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

From the beginning, he'd understood what every three-year-old knows: that the vague threat is way scarier than knowing how much trouble, exactly, you're facing.

Literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none.

Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other's babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet?

If he looks at me with those eyes that laugh and wink, then it's just as if a little light goes on inside me.

You think, Fuck it. The guy's a genius. He deserves her. What is a woman, after all? You are alive and in Paris.

Yes to it all. I had become a puppy that stands on its hind legs and barks when its master fetches its leash.

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.

I wanted to know what he thought about my loving a man whose bills were being paid by another woman.

One consolation of age is that you no longer think that everyone is staring at you, probably because they aren't.

I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if…there weren't any other people living in the world.

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.

Be patient. Life will give you what you need (to write your story).

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.

Staying awake seemed like a gift until, as so often happens with gifts, it became a burden.

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.

The ocean knew where her sailor was. We have seen him, said the waves. He is sleeping with us. You will never kiss his lips or feel the weight of his body again.