M. H. Abrams

I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.'

I'd say Harvard graduates leave here with a sense of the possible and the limit - and a sense that there are no limits to what humans can do and that you can always be pushing, whatever limit you think might be there.