14 Quotes by Geoffrey Hill

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

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.

In my view, difficult poetry is the most democratic, because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing that they are intelligent human beings. So much of the populist poetry of today treats people as if they were fools. And that particular aspect, and the aspect of the forgetting of a tradition, go together.

Dig – the mostly uncouth – language of grace.

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...