prose composition Quotes

I don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose.

[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.

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.

Writing may be either the record of a deed or a deed. It is nobler when it is a deed.

My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a "bless the mark" at any spot, and to begin a sentence with "Lord" comma.

There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.