Quote

There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.

Francine Prose

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Francine Prose
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: April 1
Academic
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Occasions
Effective
Telling
Literature
Many
Showing

More quotes by Francine Prose

Image
If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way that a rose gardener would.
Francine Prose
Image
What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.
Francine Prose
Image
All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.
Francine Prose
Image
The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.
Francine Prose
Image
Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.
Francine Prose
Image
Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.
Francine Prose
Image
I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When I graduated in 1968 it was quite a shock to find out that there was a world out there and that it wasnt going to support me.
Francine Prose
Image
If 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 Prose
Image
I work really long days and I work seven day weeks.
Francine Prose
Image
Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction.
Francine Prose
Image
I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.
Francine Prose
Image
I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled.
Francine Prose
Image
I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers.
Francine Prose
Image
When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal.
Francine Prose
Image
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.
Francine Prose
Image
Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.
Francine Prose
Image
We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.
Francine Prose