Prose Quotes - Page 4

• George Moore unexpectedly pinched my behind. I felt rather honored that my behind should have drawn the attention of the great master of English prose.

  Ilka Chase

  Should Have, Attention, Masters

  Ilka Chase (1945). “Past Imperfect”, Pocket Books of Canada

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• Demanding historical (or scientific) veracity as a prerequisite for truth is another kind of tunnel vision. To do so is to mistake poetry for prose.

  Charles Kimball

  Mistake, Tunnels, Historical

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• Educationists are entertaining. We can always find a good laugh in their prose, with its special, ludicrous combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.

  Richard Mitchell

  Ignorance, Laughing, Special

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• From the moment that photography appeared, the descriptive genre began to invade Letters... In verse as in prose the décor and exterior aspects of life took an almost excessive place.

  Paul Valery

  Photography, Letters, Moments

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• If there is anything unique about my writing it is the way that I combine poetry and prose, not just on the level of having a poem here, prose there, but that it really is a true amalgam.

  Richard Grossman

  Writing, Unique, Levels

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, School, Prose And Poetry

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• My husband makes fun of me, because I know I can use strong prose to jazz-hand my way through plot that isn't as interesting as I'd like it to be.

  Kelly Sue DeConnick

  Strong, Fun, Husband

  Source: www.ew.com

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• Well, I kind of approach both of them similarly in (that) I always see it as a movie first because that's my background. Cindy Kelley, who has been my writing partner on my novels, she works more on the prose side and the description side of the storytelling because, obviously, there's a lot more of that in a novel than in a screenplay. You only have up to 120 pages in a screenplay.

  Michael Landon, Jr.

  Writing, Pages, Firsts

  Source: www.beliefnet.com

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• The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art of biography.

  Ron Chernow

  Art, Book, Character

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• I often encountered books by academics and others who had not actually done what they had written about. They tend to create artificial simplicity; their prose doesn't have the vigor of "lived words." On the other hand, many practitioners lack the context or introspection to make their experiences and understandings transferable - and, in our time, many don't actually write the books they "author." My ideal is to unify theory and practice.

  James M Strock

  Book, Writing, Simplicity

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• Kelly Link's prose is conveyed in details so startling and fine that you work up a sweat just waiting for the next sentence to land. This is why we read, crave, need, can't live without short stories.

  Tea Obreht

  Land, Sweat, Waiting

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• Fischer was a good kid but very unsophisticated about anything but chess. It was all chess for him, every waking moment. We'd go down to the Four Continents bookstore and he'd buy any Russian chess material he could get his hands on. He'd learned enough Russian to get the gist of prose and he just absorbed the chess part.

  Ronald Gross

  Kids, Hands, Chess

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• Do you know what the lurid intermixture of complicated emotions produces, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne? That's right, it produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions. Ryan MacDonald's glorious shards of prose are both lurid and blazing, and together they comprise an anthology of complex feelings-dream-like, vivid, and never, ever obvious.

  Chris Bachelder

  Dream, Feelings, Together

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• A short story is "a short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour, to one or two hours in its perusal...having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Unique, Two, Care

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• Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."

  Victor Hugo

  Song, Drama, Spring

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• The age is materialistic. Verse isn't. I must be with the age, so I am writing prose.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Writing, Age, Materialistic

  Paul Laurence Dunbar (2010). “The Sport of the Gods: and Other Essential Writings”, p.420, Modern Library

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• What line breaks add to prose prosody is a connection between eye
  and ear which emphasizes the nature of the language by ... creating
  units of intent and emphasis, and by contouring the meloding pitch
  changes in the narrative-line.

  Diane Wakoski

  Eye, Creating, Add

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• I think many people (like myself) prefer to read poetry mixed with prose;
  it gives you more to go by; the conventions of poetry have been getting
  far off from normal life, so that to have a prose bridge makes
  reading poetry seem more natural.

  William Empson

  Reading, Thinking, Bridges

  William Empson (2000). “The complete poems”, Lane, Allen

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• There are some simple maxims which I think might be commended to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. So, if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

  Bertrand Russell

  Simple, Thinking, Long

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.37, Routledge

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• Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 - the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that 'Don Quixote' could do.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Senior, Regret, Dirty

  "The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha". Book by Miguel de Cervantes, 1605 - 1615.

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• I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

  Maya Angelou

  Song, Mean, Southern

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• I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

  Maya Angelou

  Art, Writing, Prose Poetry

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• A merely great intellect can produce prose, but not poetry, not one line.

  Edward Thomas

  Lines, One Line, Produce

  1908 Letter to Gordon Bottomley, 26 Feb.

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• More people pay attention to fiction and to narrative than pay attention to journalism. That's quite sad. More people pay attention to television than to prose. That's equally sad, if not more so.

  David Simon

  People, Attention, Fiction

  Source: progressive.org

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• The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Long, Poetry, Pages

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