Talbot Hook

“Certain brilliantly intellectual writers are not treated as intellectual writers because they don’t observe the correct forms: their poetry may be deeply learned and sophisticated, informed by quite radical rethinking of philosophical issues, but if the style of the poems is too lively, too grammatically clear, if it is not, on the surface, difficult, it does not conform to established definitions of intellectual daring.”
― Louise Glück, American Originality: Essays on Poetry

“Merlyn, […] was a staunch conservative – which was rather progressive of him, when you reflect that he was living backwards”
― T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

“Birds are not difficult to understand. Their behaviour tells me what they are thinking. Generally it runs along the lines of: Is this food? Is this? What about this? This might be food. I am almost certain that this is. Or occasionally: It is raining. I do not like it.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh