Robert Morgan Quotes

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

For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

Poetry, I thought then, and still do, is a matter of space on the page interrupted by a few well-chosen words, to give them importance. Prose is a less grand affair which has to stretch to the edges of the page to be convincing.

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.

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

I started writing poetry in high school because I wanted desperately to write, but somehow, writing stories didn't appeal to me, and I loved the flow and the feel and sense of poetry, especially that of what one might call formal verse.

Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

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

And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.

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.

I think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they're going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.

He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form.

Your failure to enjoy a highly rated novel doesn't mean you're dim - you may find that Graham Greene is more to your taste, or Stephen Hawking or Iris Murdoch or Ian Rankin. Dickens, Stephen King, whoever.

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

I write, but I don't write poetry. I don't rhyme or anything like that.

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.

I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that's required for songs and song structures and things like that. It's much easier to just write on the page.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.

I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.

The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence.

Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He looked like a man who would write vers libre, as indeed he did.

Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.