34 Prose Quotes To Inspire

In the literary world, prose has a unique ability to tap into our emotions, provoke thought, and inspire change. Whether it's the eloquent musings of a renowned author or a hidden gem from a lesser-known writer, the power of prose lies in its ability to resonate deeply with readers. Today, we invite you to explore a curated collection of the top 34 prose quotes that are sure to inspire, uplift, and perhaps even challenge your perspectives. Each quote has been carefully selected for its ability to evoke reflection and ignite the spirit, offering a moment of pause and a burst of inspiration in our daily lives. Dive in and let these timeless words spur your imagination and fuel your passion for literature.

1. “But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant” - Jeffrey Eugenides

2. “A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

3. “Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.” - Lewis Carroll

4. “DADDYYou do not do, you do not doAny more, black shoeIn which I have lived like a footFor thirty years, poor and white,Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you.You died before I had time―Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,Ghastly statue with one grey toeBig as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish AtlanticWhen it pours bean green over blueIn the waters of beautiful Nauset.I used to pray to recover you.Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish townScraped flat by the rollerOf wars, wars, wars.But the name of the town is common.My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two.So I never could tell where youPut your foot, your root,I never could talk to you.The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare.Ich, ich, ich, ich,I could hardly speak.I thought every German was you.And the language obscene An engine, an engineChuffing me off like a Jew.A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.I began to talk like a Jew.I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of ViennaAre not very pure or true.With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luckAnd my Taroc pack and my Taroc packI may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you,With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.And your neat mustacheAnd your Aryan eye, bright blue.Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You― Not God but a swastikaSo black no sky could squeak through.Every woman adores a Fascist,The boot in the face, the bruteBrute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy,In the picture I have of you,A cleft in your chin instead of your footBut no less a devil for that, no notAnd less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two.I was ten when they buried you.At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack,And they stuck me together with glue.And then I knew what to do.I made a model of you,A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw.And I said I do, I do.So daddy, I’m finally through.The black telephone’s off at the root,The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two―The vampire who said he was youAnd drank my blood for a year,Seven years, if you want to know.Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heartAnd the villagers never like you.They are dancing and stamping on you.They always knew it was you.Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” - Sylvia Plath

5. “As his dark closet shows, Bluebeard was a collector at heart, and even after dispatching a wife, could not let her fully depart.” - Shuli Barzilai

6. “It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian society.[...]what the poet is saying- that is, what his poem "means" if translated into prose- is relatively unimportant, even to himself. The thought contained in a poem is always simple, and is no more the primary purpose of the poem than the anecdote is the primary purpose of the picture. A poem is an arrangement of sounds and associations, as a painting is an arrangement of brushmarks. For short snatches, indeed, as in the refrain of a song, poetry can even dispense with meaning altogether.” - George Orwell

7. “Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.” - Ernest Hemingway

8. “They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Æolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule.” - Stendhal

9. “The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.” - Milan Kundera

10. “Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.” - Walter Benjamin

11. “I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry…and I think it's nicer…' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed… 'to look at it through poetry.” - L.M. Montgomery

12. “He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. “I miss you,” Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.” - Erin Morgenstern

13. “Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.” - Oscar Wilde

14. “The displacement of water is equal to the something of something.” - William Faulkner

15. “Poetry is more than a form of art. It's a vibration and a pulsing heart. Whether it's sour or whether it's sweet. It can give you strength no one can defeat” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

16. “The punter sweated on top of Marina, his lips all over her young body, his tongue slipping out from rows of crooked teeth, pushing hungrily from between his shrivelled lips like a clam from a shell, a bottom feeder searching for salty nutrition.” - Tom Conrad

17. “She would not have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude, the star-like impersonality, of figures to the confusion, agitation, and vagueness of the finest prose.” - Virginia Woolf

18. “This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)” - Kellie Elmore

19. “Outside our small safe place flies mystery.” - A.S. Byatt

20. “He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women.” - A.S. Byatt

21. “Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight.” - R.D. Ronald

22. “Nowhere hidden has ever turned away a goodheart guest.” - Mikl Paul

23. “You take what you can get, I reckon. You take what you can get.” - Chris Howard

24. “You couldn't make up something that looked so right.” - Chris Howard

25. “Und wenn mir nachts die Sonne scheintist niemand dader mit mir weint” - Till Lindemann

26. “I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.” - Jack Kerouac

27. “I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later it will begin to disintegrate, and then I shall die, and die conclusively. How can we face such a fact, and not live in fear?” - Jack Kerouac

28. “Because even when there is no hope, somehow you can still find a place to pin inside the things that you need.” - Chris Howard

29. “And I do. I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself. Because I never really know, I still can't tell the difference, I'm never quite certain whether or not I'm actually alive. I sit here every single day. Run, I said to myself. Run until your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes, until you're a blur that blends into the background. Run, Juliette, run faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles atrophy and your heart dies because it was always too big for your chest and it beat too fast for too long and you run.Run run run until you can't hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut and dam the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette.Run until you drop dead. Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.Run, I said.” - Tahereh Mafi

30. “Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.” - Oscar Wilde

31. “It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life “I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder.” - Charlotte Eriksson

32. “I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed out my words. I want to get all fucked up and write raw and ugly about all these things I see and am and could be.” - Charlotte Eriksson

33. “It...whatever 'it' is, has swallowed me and I lie here in the pit of its cold dark stomach being eaten alive by its bile and I...I don't even know if I want to be saved.” - Kellie Elmore

34. “...and I laugh and I spin and dance and frolic in ecstasy and I... I hurt no more, while you...you petrified little man, are left to wonder if it's you I speak of.” - Kellie Elmore