I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.

I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.

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.

The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

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.

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. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.

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