Literature Is Achieved Anxiety.

Not A Moment Passes These Days Without Fresh Rushes Of Academic Lemmings Off The Cliffs They Proclaim The Political Responsibilities Of The Critic, But Eventually All This Moralizing Will Subside.

Personality, In Our Sense, Is A Shakespearean Invention.

...the Bible Itself Is Less Read Than Preached, Less Interpreted Than Brandished. Increasingly, Pastors May Drape A Limply Bound Book Over The Edges Of The Pulpit As They Depart From It. Members Of The Congregation Carry Bibles To Church Services; The Paster Announces A Long Passage Text For His Sermon And Waits For People To Find It, Then Reads Only The First Verse Of It Before He Takes Off. The Book Has Become A Talisman.

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.

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 Us How To Talk To Other People: It Teaches Us How To Talk To Ourselves. What I'm Desperately Trying To Do Is To Get Students To Talk To Themselves As Though They Are Indeed Themselves, And Not Someone Else.