There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes. Harold Bloom More Quotes by Harold Bloom More Quotes From Harold Bloom 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 - are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. Harold Bloom voicetwothinking 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 thinking and feeling-about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly 'other' to us-are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives. Harold Bloom hatefeelingsthinking 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 trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic. Harold Bloom tryingteacherthinking 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 capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life. Harold Bloom spaceblessinglove No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean. Harold Bloom posts I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist. Harold Bloom criticismdoebelieve I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene. Harold Bloom aggravationprogressbelieve No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem. Harold Bloom miltonstrongenough 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. Harold Bloom falling-in-loverealreading But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude. Harold Bloom solitudeheartmean Shakespeare is universal. Harold Bloom universal At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy. Harold Bloom poeticindividualityneeds In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read. Harold Bloom readingmatterbook I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence. Harold Bloom greeksuccessfulthinking To be a poet did not occur to me. It was indeed a threshold guarded by demons. Harold Bloom thresholddemonpoet Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails. Harold Bloom succeedfailingsometimes I have read all of Daniel Aaron's books, and admired them, but in The Americanist I believe he has composed an intellectual and social memoir for which he will be remembered. His self-portrait is marked by personal tact and admirable restraint: he is and is not its subject. The Americanist is a vision of otherness: literary and academic friends and acquaintances, here and abroad. Eloquently phrased and free of nostalgia, it catches a lost world that yet engendered much of our own. Harold Bloom selfbelievebook 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-are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked. Harold Bloom Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. Harold Bloom We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own. Harold Bloom
