Rob James-Collier Quotes

The thing about good writing is it has a music to it.

My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.

I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about.

All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

What moves me most is style: the quality of the writing rather than the story being told.

A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.

Frost is the most sophisticated of poets.

Shaw is like a train. One just speaks the words and sits in one's place. But Shakespeare is like bathing in the sea - one swims where one wants.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising.

My work should be seen as poetry.

One of your jobs as a speechwriter is to transform the bureaucratic into the poetic.

I have felt great advances in my poetry, the main one being a growing victory over word nuances and a superfluity of adjectives.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.