11 Quotes by Tobias Hill

With a novel, there is no hurrying it. You're constantly walking into the unknown.

Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.

I hate clever-cleverness, but I love good honest cleverness.

If, at a party, I say I'm a poet, people have a hard time responding, almost as if I'd said I'm a priest.

Judgments and secrets are what make a good novel.

My strong suits, coming from poetry, will naturally be description, which I love doing. It comes very easily, and possibly structure, up to a point.

People have expectations of what you are as a writer. And writers, on the whole, don't like to be classified.

The problem with themes is that writers don't realise they are themes until someone points them out.

As a child, l was fascinated by gemstones in the way that small children are fascinated by dinosaurs or trains. Stones seem very physical and look like sweets. You can look at them microscopically and imagine things about them.