Prose Quotes: Wisdom and Inspiration from Masterful Writers

"The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes"

"Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry"

"I think Maus I is better than Maus II. The standard here is whether or not it's as good as a great book of prose literature and by that standard, no, it's not that great"

Ted Rall, Cartoonist

"Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven"

Walter Benjamin, Critic

"Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince"

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry"

David Hare, Playwright

"One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose"

Voltaire, Writer

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

Edward Young, Poet

"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"

George Orwell, Author

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

Virginia Woolf, Author

"I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose"

Virginia Woolf, Author

"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet

"Always be a poet, even in prose"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"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, Novelist

"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"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

"Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose"

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

"All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed"

Norman MacCaig, Poet

"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style"

Vladimir Nabokov, Novelist

"Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory"

George William Curtis, Author

"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"

Rick Moody, Novelist

"The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality"

Rick Moody, Novelist

"What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose"

Philip Pullman, Writer

"When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture"

Robert Morgan, Soldier

"I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs"

Judy Collins, Musician

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

Horace Walpole, Author

"I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

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

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Journalist

"I'm a better polemicist in prose"

Ted Rall, Cartoonist

"It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose"

Peter Davison, Actor

"Eloquence is the poetry of prose"

William C. Bryant, Poet

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

Ted Rall, Cartoonist

"The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse"

Robert Morgan, Soldier

"With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed"

Robert Morgan, Soldier

"Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort"

Neil Gaiman, Author

"All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose"

Moliere, Playwright

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

Robert Creeley, Poet

"When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble"

John C. Ransom

"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"

William E. Gladstone, Leader

"Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process"

Franz Grillparzer, Poet

"Prose talks and poetry sings"

Franz Grillparzer, Poet

Page 1 of 3