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.
Francine ProseIโve always found that the better the book Iโm reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.
Francine ProseIf things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out and putting it back in.
Francine ProseWith so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact itโs 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 itโs surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
Francine ProseWith 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.
Francine Prose