Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood. – Lionel Trilling
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination. – Lionel Trilling
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process. – Lionel Trilling
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian. – Lionel Trilling
While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of difficult poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and theres room for difficult poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry wont be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice. – Andrew Motion