Quotes About Prose

Lincoln's address at Gettysburg - 272 words dedicating a cemetery at the site of one of the Civil War's bloodiest battles - has been called by scholars the source of all modern political prose.

The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to understand it, mastery to write it.

But simplicity is not so simple to attain. Steve Jobs figured out that "you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to understand it, mastery to write

But simplicity is not so simple to attain. Steve Jobs figured out that "you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to understand it, mastery to write it. Heuristics

But simplicity is not so simple to attain. Steve Jobs figured out that "you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to understand it, mastery to write it.

Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

Soit toujours poète, même en prose 

Sois toujours poète, même en prose

Quel est celui de nous qui n'a pas, dans ses jours d'ambition, rêvé le miracle d'une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience  ?

La poesía dice demasiado en demasiado poco tiempo; la prosa dice demasiado poco y se toma demasiado tiempo.

Poetry says too much in too short a time; prose says too little and takes too long.

Poezia spune prea multe într-un timp prea scurt; proza spune prea puÅ£in ÅŸi dureaz? prea mult.

I've often thought that the unit of measure that best suits prose is the human breath

Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island, for cultivating a florid and overblown prose style that covered the entire spectrum from purple to ultraviolet and took sixteen volumes of interminable epistles to get to the point [...]

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

I read an article in a women's magazine about "writing purple prose for love and money." They made it sound easy, so I started writing on an old electronic typewriter that alternated between stuck keys and high throttle. I had no clue my first letter to Harlequin came back marked "Return to Sender." Luckily, I made my first sale before I understood how long the odds were.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

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.

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

In reality, Hemingway didn't appeal to plumbers or roofers who read books; he was a rich man's writer, with the vocabulary and hunting instinct of the blue-collar workingman. But Hemingway had the unfailing genius of an inventor, and each book he wrote was new, sparkling new, something that hadn't been seen in American prose, something that merged common speech with uncommon clarity, something that verged on poetry. 

The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

There is nothing more dangerous to the formation of a prose style than the endeavour to make it poetic.

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task.