Francine du Plessix Gray

About

Francine du Plessix Gray (September 25, 1930 – January 13, 2019) was a French-American Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer and literary critic.

Quotes from Francine du Plessix Gray

Here I am in Books 5, 6, and 7 of The Iliad, looking in on the clamorous terror of Homeric battle. Lances are being driven clear through eye sockets, livers, and genitals, brains pour out of mouths and severed heads, limbless torsos spin like marbles about the black-blooded earth, men catch their gushing bowels in their hands, crashing "thunderously as towering oaks" onto the blood-soaked ground, and throughout this mayhem there remains on both sides one obsession, one concern: to call an occasional truce that will let each side bury its dead properly. So onto this field of carnage warriors ride, carrying the olive branch, announcing a respite that will enable each camp to carry out its funeral rites. By mutual consent, and for this purpose only, all fighting stops.

—Francine du Plessix Gray

More about this quote

Permalink for this quote