Quotes About Prose

I'm a huge Cormac McCarthy fan and have read every book of his.

No matter how wonderful the story, it has to move on something, and that is language. The words that I use, the pace, the rhythm and cadences all need to be there. If they're not there, the story is like a boat that just sits there and doesn't move on the ocean.

The desire to say nothing, to create sacred space, opens up the most beautiful type of language available – the language of parables, prose and poetry. This is why the mystics would write so extensively about how nothing can be written and would preach beautiful sermons about the futility of words. Without such well-honed words we may begin to think that we have something to say instead of viewing our life as the space out of which God speaks.

Something I worry about a lot when I write, that I'm less worried about with a computer, is about the ways in which English is ambiguous. I'm constantly worrying about ways in which the reader might misinterpret what I've written. So I've actually spent a lot of time consciously crafting the mechanics of my prose style to use constructions that are less likely to be misinterpreted.

when you're writing programs you need to be able to name your identifiers well. And your prose has to be good. I'd feel lost without a good dictionary.

This contrasted with logos, which also meant 'word' but in the sense of a truth which can be argued and maybe changed (as in, 'what's the word on . . .?'). Unlike logoi, which were written in prose, myths were recorded in verse.

Vouloir donner à la prose le rythme du vers (en la laissant prose et très prose) et écrire la vie ordinaire comme on écrit l'histoire ou l'épopée (sans dénaturer le sujet) est peut-être une absurdité. Voilà ce que je me demande parfois. Mais c'est peut-être aussi une grande tentative et très originale

Somehow, the words don't have any vitality, any life to them, unless I can feel it marking on a paper. That's how I start. Once I'm off, then I switch to the laptop. I think it would all just be prose if it started on a laptop - not that what I do is poetry.

Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.

Respect the language in which you write. Be kind, develop good vocabulary, and be creative in writing beautiful sentences. Your prose should be your poetry when you write.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

Compared to the big 19th-century novelists, I've got a slim volume of work.

Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.

I like short stories.

In rich and captivating prose, Jessica DuLong kindly invites the rest of us on the journey of her lifetime: from a dot-com job to the fabled waters of the Hudson River, where she became a fireboat engineer. This is an unusual and fascinating book.

if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

I should be campaigning for his release in print in a way that appeared crusading but actually wasn't quite effective enough to work. Like planting barely noticeable seeds of doubt into the prose. Subtle. I

all disgracers of the press in prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink.

Susan, Susan -- Poetry: aviation! Prose: infantry. [to Susan Sontag]

What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colors which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose

The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.

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

I'm a real big fan of words.

I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.