Quotes from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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 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 it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies.
The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own—a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out -- don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy -- when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I knew I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as well as the answer to those who say that books will disappear. For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on a bus.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“So perhaps the correct conclusion is that Green was less attuned to how people sound when they speak - the actual words and expressions they employ - than to what they mean. This notion of dialogue as a pure expression of character that...transcends the specifics of time and place may be partly why the conversations in the works of writers such as Austen and Bronte often sound fresh and astonishingly contemporary...”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Every so often I'll hear writers say that there are other writers they would read if for no other reason than to marvel at the skill with which they can put together the sort of sentences that move us to read closely, to disassemble and reassemble them, much the way a mechanic might learn about an engine by taking it apart.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Not all great writers may seem great to us, regardless of how often and how hard we try to see their virtues. I know, for example, that Trollope is considered to have been a brilliant novelist, but I’ve never quite understood what makes his fans so fervent. Still, our tastes change as we ourselves change and grow older, and perhaps in a few months or so Trollope will have become my new favorite writer.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Consequently, we sympathize. We identify. We care. In fact, most writers would like you to identify”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“the truth is that grammar is always interesting, always useful. Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Like the one-sentence paragraph, the second-person point of view can also make us suspect that style is being used as a substitute for content.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees—this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“good writing should be grasped at once—in a second.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“So it may be that reading your work aloud will not only improve
its quality but save your life in the process.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“You will do yourself a disservice if you confine your reading to the rising star whose six-figure, two-book contract might seem to indicate where your own work should be heading. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read such writers, some of whom are excellent and deserving of celebrity. I’m only pointing out that they represent the dot at the end of the long, glorious, complex sentence in which literature has been written.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“A neighbor once told me he had trouble with García Márquez’s novel because he likes to drink while he reads, and 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' gave him no space in which to take a sip of his beer.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“The repetitions, meaningless expressions, stammers, and nonsensical monosyllables with which we express hesitation, along with the clichés and banalities that constitute so much of everyday conversation, cannot and should not be used when our characters are talking. Rather, they should speak more fluently than we do, with greater economy and certitude.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Many people have a gift for language that flows when they are talking and dries up when they are confronted with the blank page,”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Nabokov, Heinrich von Kleist, Raymond Carver, Jane Bowles, James Baldwin, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant—the list goes on and on. They are the teachers to whom I go, the authorities I consult, the models that still help to inspire me with the energy and courage it takes to sit down at a desk each day and resume the process of learning, anew, to write.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“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 fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“I’ve always thought that a close-reading course should at least be a companion, if not an alternative, to the writing workshop. Though it also doles out praise, the workshop most often focuses on what a writer has done wrong, what needs to be fixed, cut, or augmented. Whereas reading a masterpiece can inspire us by showing us how a writer does something brilliantly.”
― Francine Prose, quote from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

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“Certainly she could never have exchanged pleasantries with anyone. What would there be for them to say anyway? Sorry? Sorry your daughter is dead, Sorry your daughter jumped off the roof of her school when you were on your way to pick her up. Sorry you were late. Too bad you'll be reliving that failure for the rest of your miserable life.”
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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.