People Quotes by Stephen Greenblatt

“Eve is a figure for the soul that each human should love. The commandment to be fruitful and multiply did not originally refer to…

— Stephen Greenblatt

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and…

— Stephen Greenblatt

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to…

— Stephen Greenblatt

There's a huge amount of work on Adam and Eve, from the ancient world to the present. Saint Augustine was obsessed with them.I don't…

— Stephen Greenblatt

I'm not spitting in my own soup, I love having spent my life thinking about these things-but you don't have to know anything about…

— Stephen Greenblatt

But I never listen to music while I'm writing.

— Stephen Greenblatt

“The quintessential emblem of religion — and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core — is the sacrifice of a…

— Stephen Greenblatt

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

— Stephen Greenblatt

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

— Stephen Greenblatt

“you needed only to comprehend that there is a hidden natural explanation for everything that alarms or eludes you. That explanation will inevitably lead…

— Stephen Greenblatt

“Libraries, museums, and schools are fragile institutions.”

— Stephen Greenblatt

A couple of years ago I picked up New Yorker writer Alma Guillermoprieto's "The Heart That Bleeds," which is reportage from Latin America in…

— Stephen Greenblatt