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

There is no method except yourself.

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

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

To be a poet did not occur to me. It was indeed a threshold guarded by demons.

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.

Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.