A Quote by Arthur Quiller-Couch
Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed? ... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it.
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In some sense that was a blessing, because it forced me to focus on prose. I feel my narrative voice in prose is more authentically me because I developed it without ever soliciting the advice of anyone else.
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.
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.
In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.
My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.
You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.
For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.
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.
But if we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Theology says to you in effect, 'Admit God and with Him the risk of a few miracles, and I in return will ratify your faith in uniformity as regards the overwhelming majority of events.
Poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague - that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate - one has to fall back to poetry.
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.
Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing.
I won't be attempting to write Jane Austen-style prose - that would be suicidal. But I will attempt to bring the highest level of my own prose, and to make it sparkle.
"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."
Certainly for me prose has a dilatory capacity, insofar as I don't trust my abilities in prose. I imagine I could have done the same thing in poetry, but sometimes I feel more fluent in poetry than in prose, and as a consequence perhaps I might pass too quickly by a thing that I might, in prose, have struggled merely to articulate. That struggle creates space, and it seems to me a particular kind of space into which memory flows easily. I suspect I think better in poetry, however.
I do - oh, indeed I do - desire to live up to my profession, to be His, for time and eternity. But I am learning to sec how very weak I am, and how easily Satan can conquer me even when I do strive against him. I do believe with my head that Jesus can, and will give me His grace, and I do not need to fear, yet somehow my heart seems to be hard and cold and not to take it in. Oh, if we were but there - where there is no more sin ! Oh do not forget to pray for me, and don't ever doubt the love of your unworthy friend.
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