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.

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.

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?

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