I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller. — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish. — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“The quintessential emblem of religion and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core is the sacrifice of a… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity. — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
