Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He…

Every poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds himself born in the midst of prose; h e has to struggle from the…

— Thomas Carlyle

But maybe it's up in the hills under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever…

— Paul Engle

But maybe it's up the hills or under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever…

— Paul Engle

“Don’t be afraid of your struggles, they are making you dangerously strong and wise. They are preparing you for your superpowers. Let them happen,…

— Melody Lee

The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.

— Edmund Clarence Stedman

Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the…

— John Barth

I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.

— Mary Karr

Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.

— Thomas Carlyle

“Dullness. Only humans could have invented it. What imaginations they had.”

— Terry Pratchett

You can, I think, have a quiet and steady protagonist and not run the risk of terminal dullness as long as exciting things happen…

— Liz Williams

“I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five- or six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and…

— Brenda Ueland

The only thing about 3-D is the dullness of the image.

— Peter Jackson

“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we…

— David Foster Wallace

Dullness is a courteous fear.

— Mohammad MUSTAFA

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a…

— Richard Powers