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859b483
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I see the eight of us within our "Secret Annex" as if we were a little piece of blue heaven, surrounded by black, black rain clouds. The round, clearly defined spot where we stand is still safe, but the clouds gather more closely about us and the circle which separates us from the approaching dangers closes more and more tightly. Now we are so surrounded by danger and darkness that we bump against each other, as we search desperately for a ..
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Francine Prose |
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c26f3e4
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convinced us that she is telling the truth as she describes the world around her and looks inward, as if her private self is a foreign country whose geography and customs she is struggling to understand so that she can live there.
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Francine Prose |
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2abd5cc
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My publishers, two Catalan brothers with an inherited income, took me out to lunch to inform me that the first print run would be only five hundred copies. Five hundred readers? I accept! And the lunch was delicious.
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Francine Prose |
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16dc01f
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I dropped a word from the string of negative adjectives that had trailed behind me like tin cans behind the village idiot. Unappreciated, unloved, unmarried. But no longer unpublished.
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Francine Prose |
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2878c39
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There it sat under my skull with my mind gripped in its tentacles. Sometimes dormant. Sometimes awakening and squeezing. Again I would react,
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Francine Prose |
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bb78550
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I discovered how reading a book can make you want to write one.
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Francine Prose |
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9627eeb
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she lacks the nonchalance for conducting deep discussions;
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Francine Prose |
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2b6395e
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That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.
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Francine Prose |
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d65330e
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she takes me so seriously, much too seriously, and then thinks about her queer little sister for a long time afterwards, looks searchingly at me, at every word I say, and keeps on thinking: 'Is this just a joke or does she really mean it?
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Francine Prose |
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e195d11
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also discovered my inward happiness and my defensive armor of superficiality and gaiety.
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Francine Prose |
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58bee6d
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Literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none.
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Francine Prose |
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3a5e682
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words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
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Francine Prose |
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388ce9a
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You know who they wanted to play Rick?" Aaron asked. I shook my head. Why was I so tense? Didn't Aaron's question prove that we were just a couple of old-movie fans swapping Hollywood trivia gossip? "Ronald Reagan," said Aaron. "The worst president ever," I said. "You weren't born yet," he said. "What difference does that make?" I said."
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Francine Prose |
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b5ec914
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Every song may be someone's personal implement of torture.
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song
noise
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Francine Prose |
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93a6622
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Margot used to like describing men as 'my unhappy love affair.' But hadn't that presumed the existence of a happy love affair that made the others unimportant? What is unhappy is the only kind Margo ever has?
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Francine Prose |
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e19d051
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Stories aren't about things. Stories are things. Stories aren't about actions. Stories are, unto themselves, actions.
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Francine Prose |
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93e3561
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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 under-appreciated fact that language is the medium we use in 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 ..
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Francine Prose |
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3212764
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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?
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Francine Prose |
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eac38c6
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Perhaps Aquinas's notably soft line on gluttony may have had something to do with the fact that the saint was said to have had what today we might call a weight problem.
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Francine Prose |
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b302cb6
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Minutes after the shootings, everybody's cell phone rang.
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Francine Prose |
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ff1a56e
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decision. I was tired of his jealousy, sick of his belief that the only permissible topic of conversation was his unrecognized genius.
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Francine Prose |
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2d1a437
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The very same government that, by raising taxes, permitting uncontrolled immigration, weakening the military, failing to control the national debt, and fostering skyrocketing unemployment, was making it impossible for them to feed their families and provide better lives for their children. She'd come to tell them that their problems could be solved if they were willing to sacrifice, to transcend their personal interests and become part of s..
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Francine Prose |
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c84d673
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Along with preadolescence came a more pressing desire for escape. I read more widely, more indiscriminately, and mostly with an interest in how far a book could take me from my life and how long it could keep me there:
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Francine Prose |
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5860a2a
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The most important things, I told them, were observation and consciousness. Keep your eyes open, see clearly, think about what you see, ask yourself what it means.
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Francine Prose |
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19cc0c8
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there were many occasions on which I had to skim as rapidly as I could to get through those survey courses that gave us two weeks to finish Don Quixote, ten days for War and Peace, courses designed to produce college graduates who could say they'd read the classics. By then I knew enough to regret reading those books that way. And I promised myself that I would revisit them as soon as I could give them the time and attention they deserved.
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Francine Prose |
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7c3f2d6
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end of this painful story: a man possessed and maddened enough to write such letters, and a bereaved father receiving them, until at last he reached the point at which he refused to read any more.
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Francine Prose |
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e55fd9d
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fans
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Francine Prose |
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37cef64
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Reading can show you how capacious and stretchy fiction is, how much it can accommodate, and how far it has expanded beyond the straight and narrow path from point A to point B.
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Francine Prose |
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1756c61
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All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.
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Francine Prose |
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d182105
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In any case, it is neither the responsibility nor the purpose of art to make us better human beings. And it's no wonder that art that takes on this solemn task so often winds up being didactic, preachy, cloying, and less effective than art with a less exalted notion of its purpose.
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Francine Prose |
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418b40f
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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...
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sentences
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Francine Prose |
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1ba3ff6
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Teaching students to value literary masterpieces is our best hope of awakening them to the infinite capacities and complexities of human experience, of helping them acknowledge and accept complexity and ambiguity, and of making them love and respect the language that allows
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Francine Prose |
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cc46916
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it's worth noting that books are among the few remaining forms of entertainment not sustained by, and meant to further, the interests of advertising. Television, newspapers, and magazines are busily
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Francine Prose |
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2251e63
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I liked my students, who were often so eager, bright, and enthusiastic that it took me years to notice how much trouble they had in reading a fairly simple short story. Almost simultaneously, I was struck by how little attention they had been taught to pay to the language, to the actual words and sentences that a writer had used. Instead, they had been encouraged to form strong, critical, and often negative opinions of geniuses who had been..
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Francine Prose |