226 Quotes by Harold Bloom

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 to say it. He can't think, he can't write. There's no discernible talent.

Shakespeare is universal.

Everything in life is arbitrary yet must be over-determined in literature. Jean McGarry knows how to tell a persuasive tale illuminating these truths.

I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.

No, no I’m not an atheist. it’s no fun being an atheist .

Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Our educational institutions are thronged these days by idealistic resenters who denounce competition in literature as in life, but the aesthetic and the agonistic are one, according to all the ancient Greeks, and to Burckhardt and Nietzsche, who recovered this truth.

Canonical writing is born of an originality fused with tradition. – From the book jacket.

Criticism starts – it has to start – with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems.