“The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.”
Author details
Related authors
Other Lionel Trilling Quotes
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 
63% of people like this quote
This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking.
Lionel Trilling
57% of people like this quote
We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.
Lionel Trilling
57% of people like this quote
Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.
Lionel Trilling
57% of people like this quote