Quotes About 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.

If geography is prose, maps are iconography.

Prose is admittedly an art rooted in social intercourse, and a fiction writer is faster to find a common denominator with his cell mates than a poet is.

McCarthy's prose in 'Blood Meridian' comes blazing from the Book of Revelation.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

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

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

A probing analysis of the problems of evolution forms the basis of my prose.

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

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

If you ever want to understand multitasking in prose, James Joyce is your man.

The influence of cinema on all contemporary writers is undeniable. Because film is such a powerful and popular art form, we prose writers think cinematically.

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

I read some older books when I worked at Barnes And Noble, like some of the American classics. I read a lot of Hemingway. I fell in love with Hemingway's prose and with the way he wrote. I feel like he's talking to me, like we're in a bar and he's not trying to jazz it up and sound smart, he's just being him.

The cool thing about comic books and prose is that if a reader gets confused on page 8, they can backtrack. With films, you sit down in a seat and once the projector starts going you're stuck for the next two hours. There are no do-overs, rewinding or starting again.

Of course, I have to consider that I've written a lot of prose, but I do in my heart think of myself as being originally, and still primarily, a poet.

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

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

I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I must be. The writers I've admired have been not so very different from myself: Evelyn Waugh, for example, that kind of crystalline prose. And I've always admired W. Somerset Maugham more than any other writer.

In prose, you have a lot more room for digression, for very meaty kinds of dialogues. In graphic novels, you're writing haiku-length dialogue. Your job is to be efficient, to get out of the way of the art.

Prose is all about embellishing and describing.

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