expressive prose Quotes

If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it.

Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway.

To write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral. There, one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help; on scaffoldings, alone with one's consciousness.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, “here it is.

Writing, to be memorable, must be done in a state of impassioned serenity.

I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.

I find it easier to write in these little vignettes; if I try to get any more heavy, I find myself out of my league.

A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe's will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.

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

A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.