Dashiell Hammett took murder out of theVenetian vase and dropped it into the alley.

-Chandler, Raymond
On the moving of murder mysteries from the English country house to more realistic areas. Quoted in Contemporary  Authors (1979).

Some poems have form as a tree has form and some as water poured into a vase.

-Pound, Ezra Loomis
Quoted in Patricia C Willis (ed) The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1986).

   To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing, As an opaque vase fills to the brim from quick pouring, Fills and trembles at the edge yet does not flow over, Still holding and feeding the stem of the contained flower.

-Rogers,Will
  The Lost Son,'The Shape of Fire'.

To watch him fumbling with our rich and delicate English language is like seeing a Se'  vres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
Of Sir Stephen Spender. Quoted by Eric Pace in Spender's obituary in the NewYorkTimes,18 Jul1995.