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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 37cef64 | 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. | Francine Prose | ||
| 3454bf9 | Francine Prose's exquisite Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them for a deeper guided practice on the art of reading like a writer. | Jessica Lourey | ||
| 1756c61 | 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. | Francine Prose | ||
| 1ef6adf | To Judy Blume, Ann M. Martin, Lois Lowry, and V. C. Andrews; to Eva Hoffman and Lorrie Moore; to Barbara Trapido, Toni Morrison, and Dostoevsky; to TC Boyle, and Milosz and Szymborska; to Frank McCourt and Francine Prose; to Marquez and Bukowski--my first loves, my mad loves, my many loves, too many to name. | Dagmara Domińczyk | ||
| d182105 | 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. | Francine Prose | ||
| 418b40f | 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... | sentences | Francine Prose | |
| 1ba3ff6 | 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 | Francine Prose | ||
| cc46916 | 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 | Francine Prose | ||
| 2251e63 | 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.. | Francine Prose | ||
| 1ed0acd | When I said I'd give my right arm to you, I didn't think you'd ask me for it, but you did. You said, Give it to me. And I said OK. | Rebecca Brown | ||
| 5a40f45 | After Twiss went out the barn, Milly went up to their bedroom with the brown paper bag. She looked out the window before she turned it upside down and the bars of lavender soap shaped like seashells and the card shaped like a rectangle came tumbling out. Asa's name graced the front of the card. A note graced the back. 'I know why you did it, Milly. Bella swings a golf club just like him.' Milly sat a long time on her old twin mattress, star.. | love lavender milly-and-asa soap forgiveness | Rebecca Rasmussen | |
| aee3026 | Simmy entertained slippery thoughts about identity and the meaning of any individual's span on earth. When it came right down to it, she supposed that all a person really amounted to was the sum of their memories. | Rebecca Tope | ||
| 1acce27 | Books, games, jigsaws, as well as the soaring fells and sparkling lakes that would revive their spirits beyond all imagining. | Rebecca Tope | ||
| 175207e | I'm mesmerized by the way he speaks--New Orleans is pronounced N'awlins. When he says backyard, it's backyaaad. It's the kind of voice that makes you feel instantly at home, like you're a close friend or part of the inner circle. --SINGLE-MINDED | french-quarter new-orleans | Lisa Daily | |
| 3ac696e | The fading relevance of the nature-nurture argument has recently been revived by the rise of evolutionary psychology. A more sophisticated understanding of Darwinian evolution (survival of the fittest) has led to theories about the possible evolutionary value of some psychiatric disorders. A simplistic view would predict that all mental illnesses with a genetic component should lower survival and ought to die out. 'Inclusive fitness', howev.. | mind depression evolutionary-psychology the-selfish-gene mania mental-illness psychiatry | Tom Burns | |
| 1b5aafb | The Bad Dad thing usually works. Hellions are big on pecking orders and I have to remind them regularly who's at the top. Now they need a pat on the head from Good Dad before things go all Hansel and Gretel and I end up in the oven. | Richard Kadrey | ||
| cbe1cd2 | Always devise your rules as if you didn't know whether you were going be at the top or the bottom of the pecking order. | Richard Dawkins | ||
| da3ad6c | The Shambaughs came, bringing Letty. She simpered up to me. Her eyes summed up the lace tippets on my Princess dress and the wide taffeta sash that was cutting me in half. "Well, Blossom, just look at you!" she said in her mother's own grown-up voice. "I have always said a good dress will cover up any flaw." "Then you had better get one like it," I replied." | Richard Peck | ||
| 40fa0fa | That's the way people is who ain't goin' anyplace in life theirselves. They don't want you goin' anyplace either. | Richard Peck | ||
| 1ab8e3b | Is that the Crystal Palace? Oh, it must be. It's so beautiful--much more so than the engravings I've seen." The building, which covered an area of more than nine acres, housed an international show of art and science called the Great Exhibition. Win had read about it in the French newspapers, which had aptly termed the exhibition one of the great wonders of the world. "How long since it was completed?" she asked, her step quickening as they.. | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| 3bd6a55 | After they left, Emma returned to her Jasper-burger consumption with gusto. She'd asked Lisa once to find out the recipe for their seasoning mix, but Kevin wouldn't give it up. Plus, as Lisa had pointed out, it wouldn't do Emma any good to have it since she couldn't cook worth a damn, anyway. "So about what I said before," Sean said after he'd wolfed down his food, "about not wanting them to know we've had sex. It's not that I'm trying to h.. | Shannon Stacey | ||
| 3530e9b | Later in the evening, Devon and West had dinner in the dilapidated splendor of the dining room. The meal was of far better quality than they had expected, consisting of cold cucumber soup, roast pheasant dressed with oranges, and puddings rolled in sweetened bread crumbs. "I made the house steward unlock the cellar so I could browse over the wine collection," West remarked. "It's gloriously well provisioned. Among the spoils, there are at .. | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| 14a47c7 | I made the house steward unlock the cellar so I could browse over the wine collection," West remarked. "It's gloriously well provisioned. Among the spoils, there are at least ten varieties of important champagne, twenty cabernets, at least that many of bordeaux, and a large quantity of French brandy." "Perhaps if I drink enough of it," Devon said, "I won't notice the house falling down around our ears." | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| 80a0532 | Have you noticed nothing odd about their relationship, Valentine?" "No, and it's not appropriate for us to discuss it." Monsieur Broussard regarded Mrs. Pennywhistle with keen interest. "I'm French," he said. "I have no problem discussing it." Mrs. Pennywhistle lowered her voice, mindful of the scullery maids who were washing pots in the adjoining room. "There is some doubt as to whether they've had conjugal relations yet." "Now see here--".. | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| 401a34f | Christopher's numbness started melting like spring ice. And it had nothing to do with the Armagnac. It was all Beatrix. God, he adored her. But the more he thawed, the more volatile he felt. Need surged beneath the thin veneer of self-control. Too much need. Setting the unfinished liquor on the carpeted floor, Christopher drew Beatrix between his knees. He bent forward to press his lips to her forehead. He could smell the tantalizing sweetn.. | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| b6923c0 | So your middle name is Heloise," he said. "Yes, after the medieval French nun. My father loved her writings. In fact, it occurs to me...Heloise was renowned for the love letters she exchanged with Abelard." Beatrix's expression brightened. "I've rather lived up to my namesake, haven't I?" "Since Abelard was eventually castrated by Heloise's family, I'm not especially fond of the comparison." Beatrix grinned. "You have nothing to worry about.. | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| ceff140 | Leonardo began painting Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, working occasionally on the piece for four years, before moving to France. He worked intermittently on the painting for another three years, finishing it shortly before he died in 1519. Most likely through the heirs of Leonardo's assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 ecus and kept it at Chateau Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV, who move.. | Peter Bryant | ||
| 8e0cd29 | Rome This afternoon I learned that Rome is called the "eternal city." It's also the largest city in Italy. Its population is about 4 million. We hired a guide to show us Rome's "modern" attractions. We started at the Spanish Steps. It was here, in the 1700s, that the most beautiful men and women in Italy waited, hoping to be chosen as artists' models. The steps link the butterfly-shaped Piazza di Spagna with Trinita dei Monti, a French chur.. | Lisa Halvorsen | ||
| 8710f02 | A French woman, upon spotting Picasso in a cafe, approached the great master and insisted that he make a quick sketch of her. Graciously, Picasso obliged. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the woman his work of art and she gushed, 'It's perfect! You managed to capture my true essence with just one stroke. Now how much do I owe you?' " I cut in dramatically, " 'Five thousand dol.. | Lisa Lim | ||
| 0b4524f | In Paris, we spent hours at the Louvre examining great works by Gericault, Trioson, Da Vinci--the Mona Lisa was surprisingly small but had yet to be cordoned off and encased--and Ingres. I remember marveling at Ingres's Valpincon Bather. April and I couldn't believe you could make a painting that embodied such silence. I also remember looking at Jacques-Louis David's paintings The Coronation of Napoleon and The Death of Marat and trying to .. | Eric Fischl | ||
| 5d64832 | The French wouldn't have you?" she asked, her voice muffled against his chest. "On the contrary, they adored me. But there's no entertainment in staying where one is wanted." "That's too bad," Amelia said, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. "Because you're very much wanted here." | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| 809f313 | But is trade made possible by the milk of human kindness, or the acid of human self-interest? | Matt Ridley | ||
| 819d803 | if sympathy allows you to please yourself by pleasing others, are you being selfish or altruistic? | Matt Ridley | ||
| 1f84306 | For one thing no-one would want it and for another no-one could afford | David Haynes | ||
| 1fc7180 | No, what he really wanted couldn't be bought, not for money anyway. It was priceless. | David Haynes | ||
| 730723b | And it's the joke of that which has caused Janet to smile. People and their foolish positive thinking: as if moving forward ever solved a thing. As if the road ahead were any better than the road you were already on. | David Haynes | ||
| 91f83c4 | Lawyers like that, as I've told you, generally think they have nothing to learn from Jesus Christ himself when it comes to being saviors with a mission. Annoying them is like falling off of a log, really. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 23ec8f5 | A man can be a bachelor, and still be a man--because of his mind, his character, his work. But a woman without children? She's a spinster, Stevie--and a spinster is always something less than a woman. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 95ee2f0 | The Career and Death of the Mad Thief and Murderer, Samuel Green. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 651100f | It isn't really possible for men to understand how much the world doesn't want women to be complete people. The most important thing a woman can be, in our society--more important, even, than honest or decent--is identifiable. Even when Libby's evil--perhaps most of all when she's evil--she's easy to categorize, to stick to a board with a pin like some scientific specimen. Those men in Stillwater are terrified of her because being terrified.. | women society | Caleb Carr | |
| 6777022 | what if our murderer viewed his current work as just that sort of protection? Could Sara shift her point of view enough to grasp that every victim and situation leading up to a murder resonated within the killer to a distant experience of threat and violence and led him for reasons that we had not yet fully defined to take angry measures in his own defense? | Caleb Carr | ||
| 8167898 | Inevitably, I became distracted by tales that I knew held no promise for us--accounts of murders that had long since been solved, or whose salient characteristics were nothing like those of our case--but which were so morbidly fascinating on their own merits that I had to see how they turned out. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 031eed0 | Tak kotoraia iz nikh -- nastoiashchaia ona? -- uzhe edva ne vopil ia, chuvstvuia, chto nachinaiu zaputyvat'sia, i ne ochen'-to etomu raduias'. -- Ni ta, ni drugaia, Stivi, -- ob'iasnila miss Govard, nemnogo sniziv temp radi menia. -- Ee nastoiashchee ia davnym-davno razbilos' vdrebezgi. A raznye personazhi, kotorymi ona prikidyvaetsia, -- i est' te oskolki, kazhdyi po otdel'nosti, bolee ne sviazannye mezhdu soboi. Nam poka ne izvestny osoby.. | Caleb Carr | ||
| c998855 | Nu iasnoe delo, chto on agnostik, -- vmeshalsia mister Pikton. -- On zhe advokat. V nashem mire mozhet byt' tol'ko odin vysochaishii spasitel', i advokaty predpochitaiut samolichno ispolniat' etu rol'. | Caleb Carr |