Prose Quotes - Page 5

• There are few greater treasures to be acquired in youth than great poetry-and prose-stored in the memory. At the time one may resent the labor of storing. But they sleep in the memory and awake in later years, illuminated by life and illuminating it.

  Richard Livingstone

  Memories, Sleep, Years

  Richard Livingstone (2013). “On Education”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I assure you, my children, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you so often, and hammered away at it, that the Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my children, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives.

  Josemaria Escriva

  Faith, Christian, Children

  177 Copy quote

• I fear I have not one good word to say this fair morning, though the sun shines so encouragingly on the distant hills and gentle river and the trees are in their festive hues. I am not festive, though contented. When obliged to give myself to the prose of life, as I am on this occasion of being established in a new home I like to do the thing, wholly and quite, - to weave my web for the day solely from the grey yarn.

  Margaret Fuller

  Life, Nature, Morning

  Margaret Fuller, Robert N. Hudspeth (1984). “The letters of Margaret Fuller”, Cornell Univ Pr

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind.

  Salman Rushdie

  Voice, Giving, Dumb

  32 Copy quote

• How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

  Robert Browning

  Wise, Book, Mean

  'By the Fireside' (1855) st. 2

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ah! What avails the classic bent
  And what the cultured word,
  Against the undoctored incident
  That actually occurred?
  And what is Art whereto we press
  Through paint and prose and rhyme-
  When Nature in her nakedness
  Defeats us every time?

  Rudyard Kipling

  Art, Real, Classic

  Rudyard Kipling (1994). “The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling”, p.352, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.

  Dorothy Dunnett

  People, Wish, Gideon

  Dorothy Dunnett (1999). “The Game Of Kings: The Lymond Chronicles Book One”, p.375, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.

  Pauley Perrette

  Stuff, Kind, Satirical

  6 Copy quote

• neither poems nor prose just a length of rope just the wet earth -- that's the way home. neither vodka nor bread just bursts of rage just more new graves -- that's youth and that's love. neither sleep nor waking neither joy nor laughter just tears in the night -- so the rope, paper, knife.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Love, Laughter, Home

  Tadeusz Borowski, Larry Rafferty (1990). “Selected poems”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.

  Anne Lamott

  Absurdity Of Life, Dancing, Laughing

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.237, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. “I miss you,” Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Moving, Fall, Air

  Erin Morgenstern (2016). “The Night Circus”, p.134, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.

  Haruki Murakami

  Butterfly, Sight, Punctuation Marks

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 18, 2015

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.

  Richard Rorty

  Wish, Able, Heidegger

  16 Copy quote

• And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely.

  Virginia Woolf

  Beautiful, Want, Relish

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4321, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Please bury me in the library With a dozen long-stemmed proses

  J. Patrick Lewis

  Long, Library, Dozen

  4 Copy quote

• When I write after dark", observed Cyril Connolly, "the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose

  Anne Fadiman

  Writing, Dark, Purple

  Anne Fadiman (2008). “At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays”, p.64, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A book that bores me to tears is a book that neglects character building and quality of prose.

  Kristin Cashore

  Book, Character, Tears

  4 Copy quote

• Alethea Black can drop you into a dream with a single sentence, then convince you it's real. Her characters' best hopes and worst fears usually come to pass, often in fabulous ways, but their adventures feel inevitable and true-not only because Ms. Black richly imagines her people, but because she loves them. I Knew You'd Be Lovely is a lovely debut, with masterful prose and inspired invention on every page.

  Ralph Lombreglia

  Dream, Real, Adventure

  4 Copy quote

• Herein find fiction full of whimsy, wit, hurt, and terror. Wicked, as in wickedly funny, is in the mix, too, along with a prose style both seductive and sly. Any one of Doug Watson's first collection of stories, The Era of Not Quite, can mend a broken world.

  Christine Schutt

  Hurt, Broken, Seductive

  6 Copy quote

• The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn, the turning of the page between night and day.

  Shannon Hale

  Spring, Night, Light

  Shannon Hale (2013). “Princess Academy: Palace of Stone”, p.202, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

  Gerald Durrell

  Atmosphere, Produce, Expected

  6 Copy quote

• What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

  Chinua Achebe

  Children, Book, Prose Poetry

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.44, Penguin

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.

  Mina Loy

  Ideas, Sound, Made

  Mina Loy (2015). “The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy”, p.157, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dream, Ambition, Miracle

  4 Copy quote

• In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it is in prose where you find things being put together well, where there is great ambition, and equal talent. Poets have gotten so careless, it is a disgrace. You can’t pick up a page. All the words slide off.

  William H. Gass

  Ambition, Thinking, Together

  "William Gass, The Art of Fiction No. 65". Interview with Thomas LeClair, www.theparisreview.org. Summer 1977.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source