Pastoral Resources

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

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

So it is in poetry. All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse.

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy.

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.

There are people who believe in an absolutely transparent prose; with every respect for clarity of expression, I don't.

Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.

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.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

I'm a games and theory kind of guy. I love puzzles, so it was fun dissecting Shakespeare's prose.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

No, I can't write treatments, I think there's a danger with treatments. That you... you write out your first excitement and enthusiasm in a prose treatment.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

The human brain can soften as a result of incessant listening to music with an intent to commit prose.