Prose Quotes - Page 21

• Sleeping in Eden is intense and absorbing from the very first page. Written in lovely prose, two seemingly different storylines collide in a shocking conclusion.

  Heather Gudenkauf

  Sleep, Two, Eden

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• The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.

  Edvard Munch

  Spiritual, Ordinary, Diaries

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• For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

  Joseph Conrad

  Song, Men, Sea

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad’s Sea Tales - Premium Collection: An Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, A Smile of Fortune, Typhoon and more: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.1324, e-artnow

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• Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Action, Emotion

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• For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

  Diablo Cody

  Writing, Self, Fiction

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• The human brain can soften as a result of incessant listening to music with an intent to commit prose.

  Donal Henahan

  Brain, Listening, Incessant

  "Music View; When Inspired Awfulness Becomes Interesting" by Donal Henahan, www.nytimes.com. August 31, 1986.

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• The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.

  George Steiner

  Heart, Love Is, Expression

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• I am a big fan of Dos Passos' stylistic ability, his poetic approach to prose, but the ideas presented in the songs are quite different from those which he exemplified.

  Neil Peart

  Song, Ideas, Fans

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• Beer is prose. Wine is poetry.

  Jennifer Rosen

  Wine, Beer, Poetry Is

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• Gritty and witty, The Chicago Way is done the classic Raymond Chandler Way. Harvey's taut plot, snappy prose, and memorable characters make this debut novel a real winner.

  Kathy Reichs

  Witty, Real, Memorable

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• When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Insightful, Training

  " Truman Capote's previously unknown boyhood tales published" by Philip Oltermann, www.theguardian.com. October 9, 2014.

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• The prose of Joe Pulver can take its place with that of the masters of our genre – E.A. Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti – while his imaginative reach is something uniquely his own.

  S. T. Joshi

  Lovecraft, Masters, Genre

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• Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose.

  Laurie Alberts

  Writing, Two, Creative

  Laurie Alberts (2010). “Showing & Telling: Learn How to Show & When to Tell for Powerful & Balanced Writing”, p.1, F+W Media, Inc.

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• No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Paris, Grace, Stories

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• Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.

  Amit Ray

  Yoga, Writing, Exercise

  "Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style". Book by Amit Ray, May 29, 2012.

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• Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Running, Fun, Hard Work

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.48, Random House

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• Voice is the je ne sais quoi of spirited writing. It separates brochures and brilliance, memo and memoir, a ship's log and The Old Man and the Sea. The best writers stamp prose with their own distinctive personality; their timbre and tone are as recognizable as their voices on the phone. To cultivate voice, you must listen for the music of language-the vernacular, the syntactic tics, the cadences.

  Constance Hale

  Writing, Men, Sea

  Constance Hale (2001). “Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose”, Broadway

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• Rather, very, little, pretty - these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Blood, Important, Trying

  "The Elements of Style". Book by William Strunk Jr. Chapter V: "An Approach to Style", 1918.

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• Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact... the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.

  William Carlos Williams

  Different, Use, Demand

  William Carlos Williams' detail and prosody for his poem "Paterson" given to James Laughlin (now at Houghton Library), 1939.

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• The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Life, Cheating, Writing

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

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• Krzhizhanovsky wanted to perform imaginary experiments with the nature of time and space. Outside, in the streets, the Communist state was busy performing such experiments for real. In response, Krzhizhanovsky's prose has a recklessly unstable tone in which delighted examination of impossible worlds can slip into ferocious political sarcasm.... It is a method for investigating how much unreality reality can bear.

  Adam Thirlwell

  Real, Sarcasm, Space

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• I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.

  Harvey Pekar

  Writing, People, Common

  Harvey Pekar, Michael Rhode (2008). “Harvey Pekar: Conversations”, p.124, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Style, Fancy, Murder

  Lolita pt. 1, ch. 1 (1955)

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• People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.

  Ruskin Bond

  Taken, Simple, Thinking

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• So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.

  George Orwell

  Long, Style, Alive

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.315, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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