5 Quotes & Sayings By Phyllis Rose

Phyllis Rose is Professor of Creative Writing at UCLA, where she also directs the MFA Program in Writing for Performance. She received her PhD from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she taught for six years. Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and Virginia Quarterly. Her first novel, The Trolley Bride (Random House/Vintage): A widow and her three children relocate to a small town in upstate New York Read more

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1
Reading is almost always subversive. From the time you read the next night's fairy tale under the covers by flashlight when you have already had your bedtime story from Daddy and are supposed to be asleep to the time you are an adult reading junk, hoping no one catches you at it, reading is private; that's the most seductive thing about it. It's you and the book. Phyllis Rose
2
The writer… begins in confusion and nothingness and writes his way into clarity. Phyllis Rose
3
More people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf. Make a stab in the dark. Read off the beaten path. Your attention is precious. Be careful of other people trying to direct how you dispense it. Confront your own values. Decide what it is you are looking for an then look for it. Perform connoisseurship. We all need to create our own vocabulary of appreciation, or we are trapped by the vocabulary of others. . Phyllis Rose
4
Every reading is a misreading. Phyllis Rose