226 Quotes by Harold Bloom

Aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in society but as the deep self, our ultimate inwardness.

Until you become yourself," Bloom avers, "what benefit can you be to others.

The tragic sense of life in Don Quixote is also the faith of Moby Dick. Ahab is a monomaniac; so is the kindlier Quixote, but both are tormented idealists who seek justice in human terms, not as theocentric men but as ungodly, godlike men.

[José] Saramago for the last 25 years stood his own with any novelist of the Western world [..] He was the equal of Philip Roth, Gunther Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. His genius was remarkably versatile — he was at once a great comic and a writer of shocking earnestness and grim poignancy. It is hard to believe he will not survive.

Leggiamo per porre rimedio alla nostra solitudine, anche se poi, di fatto, la nostra solitudine cresce parallelamente all'aumentare e all'approfondirsi delle nostre letture. Non riuscirei proprio a considerare il leggere come un vizio, ma va concesso che non si tratta neppure di una virtù.

He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent.

Infinite Jest’ is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it.

Stephen King is Cervantes compared with David Foster Wallace. We have no standards left.

Podemos ler só para passar o tempo ou movidos por uma necessidade declarada, mas chegará o momento em que iremos ler lutando contra o tempo.