Prose Quotes: Wisdom and Inspiration from Masterful Writers

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

"We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry"

James Laughlin, Poet

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

Virginia Woolf, Author

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

Virginia Woolf, Author

"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

"You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose"

Mario Cuomo, Politician

"When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!"

Kenneth Koch, Poet

"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

"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

"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

"Prose talks and poetry sings"

Franz Grillparzer, Poet

"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

"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"

William Shenstone, Poet

"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

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

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Journalist

"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

"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

"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, Critic

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

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"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

"Always be a poet, even in prose"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"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

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

Jerry B. Jenkins, Novelist

"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

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

Moliere, Playwright

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

Vladimir Nabokov, Novelist

"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

"Eloquence is the poetry of prose"

William C. Bryant, Poet

"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

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

Horace Walpole, Author

"All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children"

Paul Auster, Author

"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

"If geography is prose, maps are iconography"

Lennart Meri, Statesman

"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

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

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"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

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