A Quote by Dick Schaap

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.

Dick Schaap

Quote Topics

Adjectives Cliches Prose

Quote Author

Dick Schaap
American - Journalist
September 27, 1934 - December 21, 2001

Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

Geoff Dyer

The only valid reason to use clichés is in the speech of a character. Cliches are indications of sloppy writing. The writer does not respect the scene he is trying to dramatize enough to fashion it through precise prose and imaginative imagery. From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by

Leonard Bishop

I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.

Dick Schaap

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

Martin Amis

Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.

Umberto Eco

But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.

Margaret Atwood

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.

William Zinsser

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.

Rajneesh

People have only two or three adjectives to describe people in the public eye. And that's okay. As long as those adjectives aren't train wreck, mess, terrible.

Taylor Swift

I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry.