Quotes About Prose

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.

Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.

What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism.

What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style.

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.

Marriage - a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.

Marriage...a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters written in prose.

There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.

The men's prose spread out on the page, sprawled leisurely like someone having a bath and a shave and then they talked day and night, as though inside them an endless scroll of paper were unraveling out through the mouth.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.

Iubim femeile pentru c? pentru ele se scriu trei sferturi din poezia ÅŸi proza lumii. Pentru c? sunt femei, pentru c? nu sunt b?rbaÅ£i, nici altceva. Pentru c? din ele-am ieÅŸit ÅŸi-n ele ne-ntoarcem, ÅŸi mintea noastr? se roteÅŸte ca o planet? greoaie, mereu ÅŸi mereu, numai în jurul lor.

Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. »

All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.

Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.

In the beginning, poetry rather than prose was the dominant form, for poetry was the normal expression of the literary impulse before writing came to confuse culture. Long after the book appeared, literature was heard rather than read.

Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.

It is naive to suppose that something that has been expressed in one form can be expressed in another without significantly changing its meaning, texture or value. Much prose translates fairly well from one language to another, but we know that poetry does not; we may get a rough idea of the sense of a translated poem but usually everything else is lost, especially that which makes it an object of beauty. The translation makes it into something it was not.

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

The unconscious does not coo sweet lyrics or unroll immaculate and measured prose, it howls and raves like the shackled and tortured beast that our civilization has made of it, and when the fetters are momentarily loosened the unconscious does not thank the ego for this meagre relief, but hisses, spits, and bites, as any wild thing would.

The only indices of civilization are the clarity, lucidity, order, good manners of everyday prose.

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.