Prose Quotes - Page 10

• He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form.

  John Crowe Ransom

  Fall, Objectivity, Style

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• She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.

  John Fowles

  Passion, Men, Soul

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• Prose is in fact the museum where the dead images of verse are preserved. In 'Notes', prose is 'a museum where all the old weapons of poetry kept.

  T. E. Hulme

  Inspiration, Museums, Weapons

  "Selected Writings".

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• Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.

  Elia Kazan

  Acting, Realistic, Poetry Is

  Elia Kazan (2009). “Kazan on Directing”, p.46, Anchor

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• It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.

  Boris Pasternak

  Lyric Poetry, Complicated, Immensity

  Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1976). “My sister, life and other poems”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Passion, Heart, Satisfaction

  Edgar Allan Poe (2016). “Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works”, p.147, Lulu.com

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• Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

  Steven Pinker

  Engineering, Technique, Example

  Steven Pinker (2014). “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century”, p.17, Penguin

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• French is not a language that lends itself naturally to the opaque and ponderous idiom of nature-philosophy, and Teilhard has according resorted to the use of that tipsy, euphoristic prose-poetry which is one of the more tiresome manifestations of the French spirit.

  Peter Medawar

  Philosophy, Prose Poetry, Use

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.2, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning

  Michael Swanwick

  Character, Mean, Hands

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• Futurists are already predicting the day mankind builds its replacement, Artificial Intelligence. Daniel Wilson shows what might happen when that computer realizes its creators are no longer needed. Lean prose, great characters, and almost unbearable tension ensure that Robopocalypse is going to be a blockbuster. Once started I defy anyone to put it down.

  Jack Du Brul

  Character, Might, Unbearable

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• ONE BLOOD is a richly detailed, intricately woven tale rendered in lush, evocative prose. This memorable debut heralds Qwantu Amaru as a talent well worth watching.

  Brandon Massey

  Memorable, Blood, Woven

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• Programming is the art of writing essays in crystal clear prose and making them executable

  Per Brinch Hansen

  Art, Writing, Crystals

  Per Brinch Hansen (1996). “The search for simplicity: essays in parallel programming”, IEEE

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• Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.

  Erma Bombeck

  Mother, Hands, Years

  "Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession".

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• Juliet is one of those rare novels that has it all: lush prose, tightly intertwined parallel narratives, intrigue, and historical detail all set against a backdrop of looming danger. Anne Fortier casts a new light on one of history's greatest stories of passion. I was swept away.

  Sara Gruen

  Passion, Light, Historical

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• Mother Dolores Hart's prose is a reflection of the inner beauty she has always possessed. A fascinating read... and read again!

  Robert Evans

  Mother, Reflection, Inner Beauty

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• Habit is the best thing for you if you’re trying to write prose.

  Alan Cheuse

  Writing, Trying, Habit

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• Karl Popper once advised a student that if he wanted to reap intellectual fame, he should write endless pages of obscure, high-flown prose that would leave the reader puzzled and cowed. He should then here and there smuggle in a few sensible, straightforward sentences all could understand. The reader would feel that since he has grasped this part, he must have also grasped the rest. He would then congratulate himself and praise the author.

  Anthony de Jasay

  Writing, Intellectual, Pages

  "The Seen and the Unseen. Part I. On the Economics of Protecting Employment" by Anthony de Jasay, www.econlib.org. December 6, 2004.

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• With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation...

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Interesting, Generations, Stylist

  Bret Easton Ellis‏ @BretEastonEllis, twitter.com. March 4, 2013.

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• To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.

  John Ciardi

  Simple, Mind, Destruction

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• The advent of the internet has made so many things possible. Self- published recreational journalism has always been around; but back when you had to at least learn to run a mimeograph, and you had to pay postage to distribute your deathless prose, people who didn't actually have much to say for themselves found other hobbies

  Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Running, Self, People

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• And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.

  James Payn

  Verses

  James Payn (1882). “Sammlung”

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• I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence that the world, including many prose writers, doesn't recognize as discipline. It is, though. It's the discipline to endure hours that you refuse to fill with anything but the possibility of poetry, though you may in fact not be able to write a word of it just then, and though it may be playing practical havoc with your life. It's the discipline of preparedness.

  Christian Wiman

  Writing, Discipline, World

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• I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry.

  Story Musgrave

  Space, Technique, Looks

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• Prose pretends to be straightforward in its application to the truth, but truth itself is a dissembler. Poetry, much more honest, knows the deception can't be overcome.

  Laurence Overmire

  Deception, Overcoming, Honest

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• There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

  Robert Graves

  Horse, Reading, Writing

  Robert Graves (2006). “The Long Weekend : a Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939: And, The Reader Over Your Shoulder : a Handbook for Writers of English Prose”, Carcanet Press

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