Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
I think Freud is about contamination, but I think that is something he learned from Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is about nothing but contamination, you might say. — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike - and I don't think there really is a distinction between the… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States. — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
“Brecht was a cynical bohemian bogey of the middle classes, but also much more than a mere provocateur. He developed and dramatized his political… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
The morality of scholarship, as currently practiced, is to encourage everyone to replace difficult pleasures by pleasures universally accessible precisely because they are easier. — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
“We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.” — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
“You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock.” — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read. — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me. — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
If I were to sum up the negative reactions to my work, I think there are two primary causes: one is that if there… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
Aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts: in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in arguments within a society. Aesthetic value rises… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
