34 quotes found
“A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.”
“Prose divides shame into stations.”
“He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain...”
“You'd love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts.”
“Rock rock. Back and forth. Lull. Push. Release. Swing back. The stars, the leaves, even the sound of the creek throbbing back and forth. Of a boat. Of a hammock. Of a child's swing. Of a womb. Back...”
“Theres a big default notion that spare, or precise prose is somehow better. I keep insisting to them that while such prose is completely legitimate, its in no way intrinsically more accurate, more ...”
“But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant”
“Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”
“She stopped then and turned her face toward him and the hateful wind.”
“Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.”
“A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.”
“Gennia is eating and talking to Ruiz on the phone. Each time he takes a mouthful, he catches a whiff of his shirt, which stinks of failure and yesterday.”
“He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. I miss you, Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded ...”
“Juliet!' I whip around but not quickly enough. She's swallowed by the crowd, the gap that allowed her to break for the door closing just as quickly as it opened, a shifting Tetris pattern of bodies...”
“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”
“Victor was the first to speak, and when he did, it was with an eloquence and composure perfectly befitting the situation”
“What did Saturday's used to taste like? Like eggs and fried ham and the bitter smell of hair in heavy rollers. Like long quiet hours and making up after a fight. Like ointment and bruising. Like wa...”
“The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires.”
“Raz was one of those vanguard human beings of indeterminate ethnicity, the magnificent mutts that I hope we are all destined to become given another millennium of intermixing. His skin was a rich p...”
“Iverson glanced down at my white-knuckled grip, then at my eyes. A hint of a smile more subtle than a single flick of snow crossed his face, and his eyes nodded approval.”
