Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Geoffrey Hill

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English poet Geoffrey Hill.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation and was called the "greatest living poet in the English language." From 2010 to 2015 he held the position of Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Following his receiving the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2009 for his Collected Critical Writings, and the publication of Broken Hierarchies , Hill is recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry and criticism in the 20th and 21st centuries.

English - Poet | June 18, 1932 - June 30, 2016

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Geoffrey Hill

We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other.

Geoffrey Hill

September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Geoffrey Hill

Public toilets have a duty to be accessible, poetry does not.

Geoffrey Hill

Snooki is a bestselling author? Huh? What? I don't know if I should dumb down my book, shoot myself or find a publisher who'll settle for a rough draft written on a Pop-Tart and a coconut lotion handie.

Geoffrey Hill

Platonic England, house of solitudes, rests in its laurels and its injured stone

Geoffrey Hill

Autumn resumes the land, ruffles the woods with smoky wings, entangles them.

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. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning?

Geoffrey Hill

... one of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross over-simplification of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective respond primitively to slogans of incitement.

Geoffrey Hill

Thus I grind to conclusion.

Geoffrey Hill

As estimated, you died. Things marched, sufficient, to that end. Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented terror, so many routine cries.

Geoffrey Hill

Dig -- the mostly uncouth -- language of grace.

Geoffrey Hill