Geoffrey Hill quotes

Thus I grind to conclusion. (Geoffrey Hill)
I think art has a right-not an obligation-to be difficult if it wishes. And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
The idea that the intellect is somehow alien to sensuousness, or vice versa, is one that I have never been able to connect with. I can accept that it is a prevalent belief, but it seems to me, nonetheless, a false notion. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
An achieved poem is always beautiful in its own way, though such a way will many times strike people as harsh and repellent. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I contrast hierarchy with hegemony, the juxtaposition of the real & surreal. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I have learned one thing: not to look down Too much upon the damned. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
It is to be hoped-I mean, I hope-that the poetry I have been writing since 1992 squares up to, takes the measure of, weighs up, the violent evasions and stock affronts of the oligarchy of fraud. I don't, even so, write poems to be polemical; I write to create a being of beautiful energy. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
Self-astonishment is achieved when, by some process I can't fathom, common words are moved, or move themselves, into clusters of meaning so intense that they seem to stand up from the page, three-dimensional almost. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I think men and women who write poetry or write music or paint are finally responsible for what they do. They are entitled to praise for any success they achieve and they should not complain of just criticism. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
Primroses; salutations; the miry skull of a half-eaten ram; vicious wonds in earth opening. What seraphs are afoot. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
"One cannot lose what one has not possessed." So much for that abrasive gem. I can lose what I want. I want you. (Geoffrey Hill)
The years will not answer for what they have done, that much is certain. There is no shaking them, we might have foreseen this but refused. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I wish I understood myself more clearly or less well. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
Did Péguy kill Juarés? Did he incite. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I think intelligence has a kind of range of sense and allows us to contemplate the coexistence of the conceptual aspect of thought and the emotional aspect of thought as ideally wedded, troth-plight, and the circumstances in which this troth-plight can be effected are to be found in the medium of language itself. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
The idea that you write to express yourself seems to me revolting. The idea that you write to glorify or to make glorious the art of expressiveness seems to me spot on. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
To say a poet is to be condemned or inaccessible because she invokes some fields of vision which we have difficulty in grasping; this seems to me a crass kind of bullying. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
For this creating to take place (as it does from time to time) words have to be accepted as heirs of their forebears, as we are of ours. And in each case, what exists is often only a bankrupt inheritance; or the hinterlands of the unspoken. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
Or say it is Pentecost: the hawthorn-tree, set with coagulate magnified flowers of may, blooms in a haze of light; old chalk-pits brim with seminal verdue from the roots of time. Landscape is like revelation; it is both singular crystal and the remotest things. Cloud-shadows of seasons revisit the earth, odourless myrrh bourne by the wandering kings. (Geoffrey Hill)
In memory of those things these words were born. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I write to astonish myself. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
Shakespeare clearly heard may voices. No secret: voicing means hearing, at a price a gift. View quote
Geoffrey Hill
I try to make a distinction between enjoyment and joy. You are only prepared to enjoy what you already have a taste for; wheras joy is shocking and surprising. View quote
Geoffrey Hill