Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic. – Terry Eagleton
With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with. – Terry Eagleton
Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm. – Terry Eagleton
Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will. – Terry Eagleton
If Copenhagen were a person, that person would be generous, beautiful, elderly, but with a flair. A human being that has certain propensities for quarrelling, filled with imagination and with appetite for the new and with respect for the old – somebody who takes good care of things and of people. – Connie Nielsen