Literature Is Achieved Anxiety.

Indeed The Three Prophecies About The Death Of Individual Art Are, In Their Different Ways, Those Of Hegel, Marx, And Freud. I Don't See Any Way Of Getting Beyond Those Prophecies.

People Cannot Stand The Saddest Truth I Know About The Very Nature Of Reading And Writing Imaginative Literature, Which Is That Poetry Does Not Teach Us How To Talk To Other People: It Teaches Us How To Talk To Ourselves. What I'm Desperately Trying To Do Is To Get Students To Talk To Themselves As Though They Are Indeed Themselves, And Not Someone Else.

...the Bible Itself Is Less Read Than Preached, Less Interpreted Than Brandished. Increasingly, Pastors May Drape A Limply Bound Book Over The Edges Of The Pulpit As They Depart From It. Members Of The Congregation Carry Bibles To Church Services; The Paster Announces A Long Passage Text For His Sermon And Waits For People To Find It, Then Reads Only The First Verse Of It Before He Takes Off. The Book Has Become A Talisman.

Reading Well Makes Children More Interesting Both To Themselves And Others, A Process In Which They Will Develop A Sense Of Being Separate And Distinct Selves.

The Morality Of Scholarship, As Currently Practiced, Is To Encourage Everyone To Replace Difficult Pleasures By Pleasures Universally Accessible Precisely Because They Are Easier.