“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

“This creature, this Baab, with his spiritual weapons, was in the end found guilty on fifty-five counts of murder, on twenty-one counts of attempted murder, on thirty counts of assault and battery, and a variety of lesser offences.”

Heinrich Baab (1908) German Gestapo officer

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“The fact that you can write verse is in itself a certificate that you can write prose.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

“Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

“Prose and poetry are different in construction. You can lie back and read prose, and you can read it fast. Poetry on the other hand, requires a different kind of attention and concentration … the effect it has on the ear and the imagination.”

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

“Courage only counts when you can count.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

“Murder… murder… Can you prove it was murder? […] I didn't think you could prove it was murder. She was dying in any event.”

John Bodkin Adams (1899–1983) general practitionar, fraudster and suspected serial killer

“You're under arrest for multiple counts of murder. You have the right to not much at all, really. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer