A Quote by 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

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Address Any Applied Beings Believed Day Demeaning Description Difficult Difficulty Does Each Encounters Far Find Human Human Being Human Beings Inner Intellectual Less More Most Music Mysteries Ordinary Other Our Ourselves Own Painting Piece Poetry Prose Real Selves Should Simplification Terms Than Us Were Why Work Would

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Geoffrey Hill
English - Poet
June 18, 1932 - June 30, 2016

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

Geoffrey Hill

We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same.

Brad Pitt

Why are murder mysteries so popular? There's a 3-part "formula" (if you want to call it that) for a genre novel: (1) Someone the reader likes and relates to (2) overcomes increasingly difficult obstacles (3) to reach an important goal. The more important the goal, the stronger the novel. And the most important goal that any of us have is survival. That's why murder mysteries are more gripping than a story titled "Who Stole My TV Set.

Lois Duncan

We tell each other stories to help each other live. That’s why I read poetry. I read poetry to stay alive. That’s why I went to poetry in the first place, that’s why I stay with it, that’s why I’ll never leave it.

Marie Howe

Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.

Walter Pater

My personality does well with people who are deemed difficult. I don't know why it does but I just seem to get along with them. The more difficult the better.

Nicole Kidman

In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude - the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.

Carl Jung

Arriving at a simple piece of music is a very difficult balance because, in being simple, you could easily be banal, so maybe it's more difficult to write a simple piece of music than a 12-tone piece where no one understands exactly what it is about.

Ludovico Einaudi

Now, in our opinion no author should be blamed for obscurity, nor should any pains be grudged in the effort to understand him, provided that he has done his best to be intelligible. Difficult thoughts are quite distinct from difficult words. Difficulty of thought is the very heart of poetry.

Alice Meynell

Nobody can figure out why it does what it does to human beings. But there is no other art form greater than music.

Dennis DeYoung

I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don't mean that everyone can write poetry - it's an art, a craft, it requires enormous commitment like any art. But there's a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It's the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.

Adrienne Rich

I plead - that it's very difficult when you deal with - ISIS and organizations like that whose - whose behavior is so barbaric and so vicious - that it doesn't seem to have any purpose other than lust for killing and power. And that's very difficult to put ourselves in other shoes.

Hillary Clinton

Why is life so difficult? Why can't we be just ourselves and have everyone accept us the way we are?

Beatrice Sparks

I've found in composing that being simple and profound—having in-depthness in your music—is the most difficult thing to do. Anybody can write a whole lot of notes, which may or may not say something . . . But why make it complicated for the musicians to play? Why make it difficult for the listeners to hear?

Horace Silver

Secrets are my currency: I deal in them for a living. The secrets of desire, of what people really want, and of what they fear the most. The secrets of why love is difficult, sex complicated, living painful and death so close and yet placed far away. Why are pleasure and punishment closely related? How do our bodies speak? Why do we make ourselves ill? Why do you want to fail? Why is pleasure hard to bear?

Hanif Kureishi

Why is this happening to me? Why am I having such a difficult time? One answer is that life is supposed to be difficult! It’s what enables us to grow. Remember, earth is not heaven!

Rick Warren

A Quote by Geoffrey Hill

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