111 Quotes by Francine Prose

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.

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.

Books are not cake—you and I can devour the same book, and there it remains for us and others to devour all over again.

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing down and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was reproof. Shouldn't I feel better than I had in the dead of night.

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.

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.

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

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

…what matters is not complexity or decoration but rather intelligibility, grace, and the fact that the sentence should strike us as the perfect vehicle for expressing what it aims to express…