All Harold Bloom Quotes
- The world gets older, without getting either better or worse and so does literature. But I do think that the drab current phenomenon that passes… Better
- Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of… Address
- Reading well makes children more interesting both to themselves and others, a process in which they will develop a sense of being separate and distinct… Book
- The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me. Class
- I won't say he [Shakespeare] 'invented' us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of… Contains
- The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or… Been
- One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself… Accomodating
- No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean. Funny
- You know, I don't want to be offensive. But 'Infinite Jest' [regarded by many as Wallace's masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have… Awful
- To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all, All
- I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike Academy
- People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach… Cannot Stand
- No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem. Chaucer
- In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read. Book
- Indeed the three prophecies about the death of individual art are, in their different ways, those of Hegel, Marx, and Freud. I don't see any… Any
- Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by… All
- Shakespeare is universal. Funny
- Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk… Accept
- Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails. Failing
- The world does not get to be a better or a worse place; it just gets more senescent. Better
- It is by extending oneself, by exercising some capacity previously unused that you come to a better knowledge of your own potential. Better
- I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike - and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two… Academy
- There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes. Aristophanes
- Real reading is a lonely activity. Activity
- We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better;… Authentic