Harold Bloom Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era.”

“All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.”

“I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.”

“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.”

“I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.”

“Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails.”

“I think Freud is about contamination, but I think that is something he learned from Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is about nothing but contamination, you might say.”