Geoffrey Hill Quotes

#1. Who now would thrust enquiry on / Beyond necessity of desire?

Geoffrey Hill

#2. 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

#3. Thus I grind to conclusion.

Geoffrey Hill

#4. Evil is not good's absence but gravity's
everlasting bedrock and its fatal chains
inert, violent, the suffrage of our days.

Geoffrey Hill

#5. Recall the cold
Of Towton on Palm Sunday before dawn,
Wakefield, Tewkesbury : fastidious trumpets
Shrilling into the ruck ; some trampled
Acres, parched, sodden or blanched by sleet,
Stuck with strange-postured dead. Recall the wind's
Flurrying, darkness over the human mire.

Geoffrey Hill

#6. Take accessible to mean / acceptable, accommodating, openly servile.

Geoffrey Hill

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

Geoffrey Hill

#8. fierce tea making

in time of war,

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

Geoffrey Hill

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

Geoffrey Hill

#11. 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

#12. 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

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

Geoffrey Hill

#14. Even now, I tell myself, there is a language / to which I might speak and which / would rightly hear me ...

Geoffrey Hill

#15. Last days, last things, loom on: I write / to astonish myself. So much for all / plain speaking...

Geoffrey Hill

#16. I wouldn't mind dispatching all 3 of my room mates vile felines in this apartment. Nasty beasts. I'm just afraid I wouldn't be able to sell "curiosity" as a serial killer.

Geoffrey Hill

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

Geoffrey Hill

#18. 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

#19. Finally coming to terms with Fathers Day. I blow as a Dad. I get it. No, I'm not an evil, abusive Father, it's just that while all my intentions and thoughts have been out of love for my kids, my actions and behaviour never measured up.

Geoffrey Hill