Prose Quotes - Page 17

• History meets romance meets suspense! Compelling, original and wildly romantic, Beatriz Williams’ prose is stunning and the plot edge-of-your-seat gripping. OVERSEAS is an absolute triumph—I loved every page.

  Tilly Bagshawe

  Romance, Triumph, Plot

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• I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

  Buzz Bissinger

  Writing, Purple, Littles

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• Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.

  W. H. Auden

  Listening, Remarks

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• If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines? The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. . . . Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers. . . .

  Bodhidharma

  Truth, Break Through, Understanding

  Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.31, Macmillan

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• Men will forgive a man anything except bad prose.

  Winston Churchill

  Writing, Men, Forgiving

  Winston Churchill (2001). “The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill”, Michael O'Mara Books

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• The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Long, Poetry, Pages

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• In our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim... The details, the prose of nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendour.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Creativity, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.157

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• The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Political, Historical

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• For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

  Sylvia Plath

  Jobs, Real, Writing

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• Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.

  Walter Pater

  Writing, Poetry, Difficult

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• I think Lindsay Kemp really introduced me to the work of Jean Genet, and through that, I kind of kept re-educating myself about other prose writers and poets.

  David Bowie

  Thinking, Kind, Poet

  "David Bowie On The Ziggy Stardust Years: We Were Creating The 21st Century In 1971". Interview with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. January 11, 2016.

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• My poems and prose are not often in direct conversation with each other, but there's so much crossover - everything that comes out of that crucible of language - that working in poetry and prose is energizing - to me as a writer and to the work itself.

  Alex Lemon

  Crucible, Language, Conversation

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I like the way the prose and poetry interact.

  Rachel Zucker

  Prose And Poetry, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Theatre aside, my penchant for the extended monologue began with my reading of Browning's dramatic monologues, in high school. My inclination to adopt the form for prose was confirmed by Richard Howard's book of dramatic monologues, Untitled Subjects.

  Norman Lock

  Book, Reading, School

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.

  John Dufresne

  New Beginnings, Creative, Energy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I like a great degree of compression. I like to mix lateral steps with forward ones. I don't want the prose ever to feel simply functional - at least not for any stretch.

  Michael Helm

  Want, Steps, Degrees

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I wish my prose to be transparent—I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Writing, Wish, Want Him

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• I think the most reliable way to teach it is through reading work aloud over and over. Many prose writers been encouraged to do that, but that might be changing. Denise was the one who taught me to develop my ear. I never knew how to listen to writing until she started reading her work to me.

  Paul Lisicky

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a way that includes the power of the music of language and maybe more imaginatively in poetry, but I don't really know about better or worse. I guess it depends on the writer.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Way, Different, Might

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• The older I get, the more I seek to use a plain prose style, concentrating more on story.

  John Scott

  Style, Stories, Use

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• Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.

  Martin Amis

  Writing, Thinking, Choices

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• I didn't mind writing incoherently, up until about 1980, occasionally. But after that, I decided, might as well be articulate. And I found, though, that writing poetry affected my prose to the point where I never again wrote in one draft, and my prose just took longer and longer and longer. It took longer and longer to come up with an acceptable text. And that's probably one of the reasons that my output has slowed down.

  Richard Meltzer

  Writing, Mind, Might

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In some sense that was a blessing, because it forced me to focus on prose. I feel my narrative voice in prose is more authentically me because I developed it without ever soliciting the advice of anyone else.

  Kevin Keck

  Blessing, Narrative Voice, Focus

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I often say that Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, and Javier Marías are my stylistic holy trinity, prose writers who amaze me with their notation of consciousness and voice.

  Garth Greenwell

  Voice, Mars, Consciousness

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.

  Neil Simon

  Book, Writing, Firsts

  Source: bookpage.com

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