Prose Quotes - Page 22

• To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

  Mark Twain

  Differences, Austin, Salary

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• Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.

  T. S. Eliot

  Communication, Simple, Reality

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• The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.

  Christopher Hitchens

  People, Boredom, Tyranny

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• Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.

  Anne Fadiman

  Drug, Doubt, Influence

  Anne Fadiman (2008). “At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays”, p.171, Macmillan

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• If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

  Lori Lansens

  Liars, Coffee, Writing

  Lori Lansens (2006). “The Girls: A Novel”, p.104, Hachette UK

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• He was a physicist, more precisely an astrophysicist, diligent and eager but without illusions: the Truth lay beyond, inaccessible to our telescopes, accessible to the initiates. This was a long road which he was traveling with effort, wonderment, and profound joy. Physics was prose: elegant gymnastics for the mind, mirror of Creation, the key to man's dominion over the planet; but what is the stature of Creation, of man and the planet? His road was long and he had barely started up it, but I was his disciple: did I want to follow him?

  Primo Levi

  Gymnastics, Men, Creation Of Man

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• Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.

  Julian Barnes

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

  Julian Barnes (1985). “Flaubert's parrot”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Book, Heart, Mind

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• The poetry of life must not be replaced with matter-of-fact prose.

  Steve Grand

  Matter, Facts, Replaced

  Steve Grand (2003). “Creation: Life and How to Make It”, p.5, Harvard University Press

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• A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Faces, Second Thoughts, Visible

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2003). “Middlesex”, p.218, A&C Black

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• Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

  Cole Porter

  Funny, Change, Humorous

  "Anything Goes" (song) (1934)

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• It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Writing, Personality

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.231, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it.

  Ben Okri

  Stress, Writing, Hands

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• When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Voice, Emotion

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• Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it's transcribed into written prose.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Self, Ordinary, Speech

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

  Horace Walpole

  Beautiful, Art, Way

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• There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.

  Edward Young

  Poetry, Literature, Logic

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• Prose is walking; poetry is flying

  Galway Kinnell

  Flying, Poetry Is, Walking

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• What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style.

  Martin Amis

  Perseverance, Wife, Style

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Aug 10, 2016

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• See how weak prose is.... Presently I shall go to a bar and there one or two poets will speak to me and I to them and we will try to destroy each other or attract each other and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose.

  Jack Spicer

  Two, Trying, Bars

  Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.172, Wesleyan University Press

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• Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Voice, Relaxation

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• Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Sometimes, Rich, Hard

  WILLIAM STRUNK, JR. (1959). “THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE”

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• It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Simple, Style

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• The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly ("It is believed...," instead of, "I believe..."), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Believe, Writing, Heart

  Parker J. Palmer (2017). “The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal”, p.113, John Wiley & Sons

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• Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Simplicity, Belief

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