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

— Vachel Lindsay

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)

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Vachel Lindsay 15

American poet 1879–1931

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Interview with J D McCarthy 'The Art of Poetry' no 35 Fall 1985

“Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often succeeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that Infinity can make itself finite or that Space can make itself bounds or that Eternity can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily as though he were writing any other miracle.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

“If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Lifestyle (2012) https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sBsG9V1oVdMC,

“To write a verse or two is all the praise
That I can raise.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Praise, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“When you review an exhibition of paintings you don't compose a painting about it, when you review a film you don't make a film about it and when you review a new CD you don't make a little CD about it. But when you review a prose-narrative then you write a prose-narrative about that prose-narrative and those who write the secondary prose-narrative, let's face it, must have once had dreams of writing the primary prose-narrative. And so there is a kind of hierarchy of envy and all those other things.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Interview with Ramona Koval on Radio National (4 September 1999) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s21638.htm

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

“The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Context: The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

“All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

Tout ce qui n'est point prose, est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers, est prose.
Act II, sc. iv
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670)

“Writing is thinking on paper, or talking to someone on paper. If you can think clearly, or if you can talk to someone about the things you know and care about, you can write - with confidence and enjoyment.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Introduction, p. vii.
On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976)

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

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