Quotes About Verse

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn't come out right, you've got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

More thought is demanded but more accomplished if we set them up: "Written boldly into the Bible is this phrase . . ." "Paul felt keenly that . . ." "This is what Charles Dickens was trying to tell us when he observed . . ." "You can see the significance of those words embedded in verse 10 . . .

Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

The success of my rule does not rely on my ability to recite obscure Latin verse.

I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.

I have a song to sing, O!Sing me your song, O!

Don't settle for one-night stands in the arms of a stranger. Be obsessed with your wedding date. Guard against forgetfulness. Be intolerant of memory lapses. Write yourself notes. Memorize verses. Do whatever you need to do to remember. " Aim at what is in heaven. Think only about the things in heaven" (Colossians 3:1–2).You are engaged to royalty, and your Prince is coming to take you home.

Ha, ha —Job 39:25

La buena prosa debe ser tan precisa como el verso, e igual de sonora" escribe Flaubert.

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.

As for literatureIt gives no man a sinecure.And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece."And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it."

An epic is a poem including history.

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it. Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.

Usually plot is to fiction what form is to poetry. It lifts and fills the rambling language and presses it down into a single shape and sound. (85)

To condemn Wordsworth for not writing verse of political and social protest, or for having forsaken the revolution, is to cross the final divide between academic arrogance and moral smugness.

It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten another's dull task. What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchanges of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Reviewers have called my books 'novels in verse.' I think of them as written in prose, but I do use stanzas. Stanza means 'room' in Latin, and I wanted there to be 'room' - breathing opportunities to receive thoughts and have time to come out of them before starting again at the left margin.

Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them.