Harold Bloom Quotes

“Infinite Jest’ is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it.”
― Harold Bloom

“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; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.”
― Harold Bloom

“Forgetfulness is a property of all action. The man of action is also without knowledge: he forgets most things in order to do one, he is unjust to what is behind him, and only recognizes one law - the law of that which is to be.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Collected Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: Will to Power, Genealogy of Morals, and Zarathustra—Übermensch, nihilism critique, and eternal return

“As Raimbaut dragged a dead man along he thought, ‘Oh
corpse, I have come rushing here only to be dragged along by the
heels like you. What is this frenzy that drives me, this mania for
battle and for love, when seen from the place where your staring
eyes gaze and your flung-back head knocks over stones? It’s that
I think of, oh corpse, it’s that you make me think of: but does anything
change? Nothing. No other days exist but these of ours
before the tomb, both for us the living and for you the dead. May
it be granted me not to waste them, not to waste anything of what
I am, of what I could be: to do deeds helpful to the Frankish cause:
to embrace, to be embraced by, proud Bradamante. I hope you
spent your days no worse, oh corpse. Anyway to you the dice have already shown their numbers. For me they are still whirling in the
box. And I love my own disquiet, corpse, not your peace.”
― Italo Calvino

“The Anxiety of Influene...came out at the same time that a lot of us were energetically rejoicing in the rediscovery and reprinting of earlier woman writers, the rich inheritance that had been withheld from all writers by the macho literary canon. While these guys were over there being paranoid about influence, we were over here celebrating it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Cheek by Jowl: Talks and Essays on How and Why Fantasy Matters