Harold Bloom

What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering.

No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.

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.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health.