Prose Quotes

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.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

There are people who believe in an absolutely transparent prose; with every respect for clarity of expression, I don't.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

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

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

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

There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

That poetry survived in its formal agencies finally, and that prose survived to get something said.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

Marriage - a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.

My early prose style - this is so embarrassing - was sort of a suburban, Presbyterian knockoff of Woody Allen.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy.

When prose gets too stylized and out of control - and Stein is sometimes a good example - when you don't know what the hell is going on, then it's kind of boring.

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.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

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

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.