A Quote by George Orwell

The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.

George Orwell

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Egoism Enthusiasm Four Great Historical Impulse Motives Political Prose Purpose Sheer Writing

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George Orwell
British - Novelist
June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

Samuel McChord Crothers

I don't think nostalgia is a healthy modality. But nostalgia and a sense of history are not the same thing. Nostalgia is a dysfunction of the historical impulse, or a corruption of the historical impulse.

William Gibson

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

George Orwell

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.

August Wilson

Hunger, love, vanity, and fear. There are four great motives of human action.

William Graham Sumner

Enthusiasm needs to be effective enthusiasm. We must distinguish between the contribution and enthusiasm of the cheerleader and the enthusiasm of the player. While cheerleaders serve an important purpose, the real contest involves players on the field or on the court of life. We must not go through life acting only as enthusiastic cheerleaders available for hire; we must be anxiously and personally engaged.

Neal A. Maxwell

If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.

Diana Gabaldon

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.

Margaret Atwood

Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.

George Orwell

I love writing prose. I really love writing prose. It's very pleasurable for me.

Marjorie Liu

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.

Victor Hugo

I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.

Randa Abdel-Fattah

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.

Eugenio Montale

I do love writing prose interspersed with the poetry of other people. Their rhythms break into my prose and create a connection.

Pattiann Rogers

When I was younger, I used to be very impatient with anyone who wasn't doing overtly political work. I've since come to feel that some writers have an appetite or a need for the political, for political discourse, for historical political subjects.

Tony Kushner

My object when writing prose is to write as clearly as possible. I think I know what I'm saying in prose, and I want others to understand it and to be able to restate it.

Pattiann Rogers

A Quote by George Orwell

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