#prose

The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#prose #song #speech #men

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them! ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

#deserve #die #front #going #hell

Her life had been too safe to need courage, and too easy to develop resolve. ↗

— Stephen T. Harper

#fantastic-prose #just-plain-wow-writing #courage

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably. ↗

— John Cheever

#prose #short-stories #intelligence

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries. ↗

— Eugenio Montale

#centuries #comedy #creative #dante #did

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry. ↗

— Eugenio Montale

#connection #didactic #even #exist #great

And write what you love - don't feel pressured to write serious prose if what you like is to be funny. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#funny #like #love #pressured #prose

I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it. ↗

— Ben Okri

#came #change #collapsed #denser #got

He convinced me that if we're going to have honest government that you can't leave it up to the crooks and that honest people have to get involved in government. So I did. I got involved as a criminal prosecutor with the U. S. Justice Department. ↗

— Bill Scott

#criminal #crooks #department #did #get

I've written a lot of prose. I just haven't published it. ↗

— Patti Smith

#i #just #lot #prose #published